[flyinphill]

I am in the market for a used 3-axis machine in the $20-25k range. I have come across a few Cincinnati machines with an Acramatic control, but I know nothing about these machines or this type of controller.

What quality, durability, personal experiences, opinions, etc, can anyone give me about Cincinnati Sabre VMC's.

As for the controller, I have used Fanuc controllers extensively, and have some experience with both Haas and Mitsibishi Meldas controllers as well. Can anyone with experience give me some ideas as to how the Acramatic 2100 compares to these other controllers.

Also, anyone with a used machine that may fit my needs, feel free to contact me.

[laka]

Our shop has a Cincinnatti Arrow VMC-750, purchased new in 2000. Here's my 2 cents..

Control: If you're used to a Fanuc style control, this will be a whole new world for you. Windows NT based and very powerful. More options than you know what to do with. If you have the proper manuals, it can be fairly easy to learn. There are some very nice features in the control.

Quality: Ours has been used quite heavily for 6+ years, with no major mechanical problems as of yet. Keep up on the basic maintenance and you should be fine. Our linear way are starting to get a bit sloppy (slight chatter when interpolating.) We heavily use our machine for drilling and plunge milling. We can peck drill 316ss with a 1.875" indexible drill and reach 100% load. Sometimes we drill 6+ hours a day on this machine. It can handle most heavy milling jobs well.

There are a few main drawbacks to this machine. The A2100 control is not supported very well anymore, and it may be difficult to get customer service if you ever need it. Secondly, being Windows based, the control is prone to problems. Our hard drive recently failed, thankfully we had a backup, but i've heard horror stories from people losing their hard drives and having to reload the machine from scratch.

Hope this little bit of info helps. I know our machine pretty well, if you need any more info just drop me a line.

[Scott_bob]

We have a Cinc Sabre 1000, and a Motion Master 5 axis Router both with the A2100 control. Both have Linear ways and in my opinion not as good for heavy milling as box ways. They are supposed to be more accurate though.
As for the A2100 control, I think it is better than say a Fanuc and far better than say our Haas or any Fadal control. It is too bad that this control is now owned by Siemens, personal opinion: "This was just an aquisition of Vickers, kind of like a corporate buyout of the competition". Not knowing the condition of the machine, I can only say this machine is much better than any Haas or Fadal.

Good luck,

[Al_The_Man]

The biggest gripes I have come across, is if the hard drive fails, officially you need to pay through the nose for one with the system reloaded in.
It pays to make a verbatim copy of the drive while it is working, the other is a regular failure of the PC power supply, and if you have Kollmorgen motor/drives, the type often fitted are now obsolete and Vickers/Parker who now own Kollmorgen do not seem to support them very well, or at an exhorbitant price.
Al.

[cdlenterprises]

We have one. It's a V5-2000 with the 2100 control. The control is OK - I wouldn't go out of my way to buy one. I'm like you, if I can get a deal on it than I will adapt as needed. If you're used to Fanuc than this control will be overboard. It has a lot of useless stuff in it that you need to work around(ie: it won't let you use a drilling cycle unless the tool is DEFINED specifically as a drill in the tool page) My opinion is it is a 1/2 breed between a Fanuc and Mazatrol. It has some conversational features and you can program it g-code. This is a 5-axis machine so the control may be a little different than one that you may run into. I'm not sure I agree with the fellow above about it being better than a Fadal. I think Fadal hit it right with the 88HS control, but that's neither here nor there. If you get a deal, I wouldn't be afraid of one. It'll come with a learning curve just like anything else.

:cheers:

[flyinphill]

Well, its all over but the cryin' now!

I pulled the trigger and now own my very first CNC machine. I appreciate the responses, it helped me with my decision to buy. I don't know that I got a great deal on it, but I feel like I came out OK on it. Some of you may have seen it on Ebay, it is a 1996 Sabre 750. I don't know exactly how many hours it has on it, but I can tell you by the wear and tear on the inside of the cabinet that it is pretty low. And probably very little steel as well. Once I get it powered up, maybe I will be able to get the hours, not that it really matters now.

It was tough dropping that kind of money for something that you have never seen with your own eyes, but the machine was in California, and I am in Charlotte, NC, so a leap of faith was in order. It has already travelled from California to North Carolina, and is currently sitting at the riggers warehouse. It will be about a week before it will be installed at my shop, and probably another 7-10 days after that before I get power to it.

It has a bunch of manuals with it, but they are shrink-wrapped inside the cabinet, so I probably won't get them until I take delivery next Monday. The manuals should provide me a lot of info, but I am sure that once I can power it up I will have several questions. But for now, maybe a couple of prelim questions that someone may be able to help me with. For starters, how are you making a backup of the hard drive? Are you removing it and having it copied, or are you somehow using a USB or Firewire cable to transfer a copy?

Also, I will be writing code from MasterCAM. Has anyone used the post-processor for V9.1 to this controller? Does it work correctly?

[laka]

Here's a copy of the Tech Bulleting directly from Siemens on how to do a hard drive backup on the machine. A21_049C.pdf I've recently preformed this task on two machines, so if you need a hand let me know.

We use V9.1 on our machine, but not sure if the post is a generic one or if it was custom made.

Good luck!

[flyinphill]

Here's a copy of the Tech Bulleting directly from Siemens on how to do a hard drive backup on the machine. A21_049C.pdf I've recently preformed this task on two machines, so if you need a hand let me know.

We use V9.1 on our machine, but not sure if the post is a generic one or if it was custom made.

Good luck!

Nothing like some nice light reading for a lazy Saturday afternoon!

I skimmed it, looks like loads of fun stuff. I will go through it more thoroughly when I get a chance. Which method did you use to back up?

[laka]

I used the method described in section 4.

I made a Dos 6.22 Boot disk from www.bootdisk.com and found an old version of Norton Ghost online. It worked very well.

[davereagan]

Hello,
I have a Mighty Mustang C-42 (Taiwan machine new in 1999) with an Acramatic 2100 control, which I love. I'd be happy to help in any way I can, such as fixture offsets, etc. I don't do much contouring work, just 2D, so I don't use a cam system. When I do write a program offline and save as a text file, I have an external 3.5" floppy with USB which I plug into my laptop. I write it to a 3.5" disc and transfer it into the 2100 that way. I have never had a program that came even close to the 1.44mb that a floppy holds. Funny, that's so small by today's standards. I saw your Ebay auction and I think you got a good deal, especially with the Renishaw probe. By the way, with this control, I have noticed that most builders do a poor job of choosing where to put the pendant, which you will be touching for every cycle start, feedrate override, etc. I would lower the pendant, but run it for a week and you'll know where you'd rather have it. Also, putting a 100 watt bulb in that Halogen light brightens it up noticeably over the 55 watt original bulb. I did that and never had trouble with the extra current drawn from the transformer. Easy to find at any auto parts store. Again, feel free to email me with any questions. [email protected]

[tobyaxis]

The Control is Great and powerful, the Machine is a Piece of !@#$. We are talking Alarm City with a lot of Functionality Problems.

This has been my experience with these machines, all 4 that I have had to work with in the past.

Now I won't work with anything but Japan's finest with Fanuc Controls, LOL. Learned my lesson working with those and always got a beating LOL(chair)

Just my 2 cents

[Dave Slifka]

The control on your machine is the best control in the market. Ive delt with many controls out there and it is light years ahead of the rest. One of the posters did mension the power supply being a week spot. It is but for 25 bucks you can go to staples and pick up another when it goes bad. The fans on the power supplies fail then the power supply overheats. Also have a backup of the hard drive for when the hard drive goes bad. 100 bucks takes care of that problem. I have nine of these machines and have been with this control for 12 years since its birth. I was a beta test site for the control. I have seen many of the alarms and know how to get out of them inexpensivly.
If you have any questions feel free to call www.pre-machining.com

Dave Slifka

[jam1201]

is there a posting out there with a step by step lesson on writing a RAP programn on an
Arrow 1500 2100 controller?

[danielfdiaz]

We have an Arrow 1000 with the Acramatic 2100- We are getting an Alarm 44-43
Cause: The feedback signal is not detected for an unused servo channel. This is typically an encoder error on a channel that is either unconfigured or removed.
Remedy:Install a Loopback plug for servo channels that are not used.
Tried: the remedy and the Alarm moved to whichever axis we placed our Loopback plug.
We test Loopback and it is not damaged. We made another loopback just to be sure and had same problem.
Question: what is causing this problem? We have all ready replaced CPU Realtime board and I/O board. Need help!

[davereagan]

I have a Mighty Vertical machining center with Acramatic 2100 control, new in 1999. The CPU power supply died three years ago. My computer guru friend was only 23 years old, making him a child of plug 'n' play. When putting the computer back together, he paid little attention to which slot each board went into because with all the computers he had worked with, it didn't matter. I kept getting an alarm similar to or exactly what you are getting. There is a 5 volt signal given to one board with enough current to work with an encoder. The slot he had chosen did not have enough current in the 5 volt signal, and the alarm kept happening. I discovered this problem while on the phone with Dave Lyle at the Siemens help line after two weeks of pulling my hair out. As soon as I put the board in the correct DVI slot, everything was back to normal. I see that you recently replaced two boards. Is it possible you removed another board and put it in a different slot? I would be happy to help you in any way. You are welcome to call me at 248-495-0713. Dave Reagan

[davereagan]

Oh, just in case you don't have the number, Siemens help desk is at 800-879-8079.

[laka]

If your machine doesn't have a 4th axis installed, someone may have enabled it on the pendant by mistake. When we install and remove ours we need to go into the setup and enable/disable the 4th axis or we get this alarm.

[danielfdiaz]

I have a Mighty Vertical machining center with Acramatic 2100 control, new in 1999. The CPU power supply died three years ago. My computer guru friend was only 23 years old, making him a child of plug 'n' play. When putting the computer back together, he paid little attention to which slot each board went into because with all the computers he had worked with, it didn't matter. I kept getting an alarm similar to or exactly what you are getting. There is a 5 volt signal given to one board with enough current to work with an encoder. The slot he had chosen did not have enough current in the 5 volt signal, and the alarm kept happening. I discovered this problem while on the phone with Dave Lyle at the Siemens help line after two weeks of pulling my hair out. As soon as I put the board in the correct DVI slot, everything was back to normal. I see that you recently replaced two boards. Is it possible you removed another board and put it in a different slot? I would be happy to help you in any way. You are welcome to call me at 248-495-0713. Dave Reagan

Thank you Dave,
Your a life saver! You hit the nail on the head. The boards were one slot off to the right. Once we got them in the right spot our sleeping beauty woke up. Now we can cut some metal!

Thank once again to Dave and to all who replied
From Softest Designs in San Antonio
Danny Diaz
Shop Supervisor