Herding Cats
Hardplates
It never fails to amaze me how many good seasoned machinists don't understand the importance of a machines parameters and that they are maintained by a battery.
If you are buying a used machine at the least take a video while scrolling through them. Don't rely of the factory parameter sheets as it's not uncommon for options to be upgraded and or tuning done that was not documented and if you don't have a backup other than the original you can loose them. Including gridshift changes that were required because of a crash, encoder ballscrew or servo replacement.
That said, if you are doing tuning or playing around in any way document it with the original sheet as well as in digital format.
So feel free to post procedures for specific controls and U/I's.
The newer Fanuc stuff starting with the I series is pretty easy where you just boot it up while holding the right 2 soft keys and do an SRAM backup on a PCMCIA card, which is everything. This procedure also works for restoring the control.
I believe the 16/18 that came before the I series had a PCMCIA card slot but it was inside the control cabinet rather than on the screen.
Another useful tip is on the older O series the option parameters (900s) are not punched out with the parameters......unless you hold ; (eob) while pressing output, then you get all of them. But you also need to punch out the diagnostics which will be the PMC parameters which are 300s. They will punch out as N10300 and so on.
Feel free to add, make corrections and ask questions.
I am going to make this a sticky as I think it is one of if not the most important part of machine ownership.
If you are buying a used machine at the least take a video while scrolling through them. Don't rely of the factory parameter sheets as it's not uncommon for options to be upgraded and or tuning done that was not documented and if you don't have a backup other than the original you can loose them. Including gridshift changes that were required because of a crash, encoder ballscrew or servo replacement.
That said, if you are doing tuning or playing around in any way document it with the original sheet as well as in digital format.
So feel free to post procedures for specific controls and U/I's.
The newer Fanuc stuff starting with the I series is pretty easy where you just boot it up while holding the right 2 soft keys and do an SRAM backup on a PCMCIA card, which is everything. This procedure also works for restoring the control.
I believe the 16/18 that came before the I series had a PCMCIA card slot but it was inside the control cabinet rather than on the screen.
Another useful tip is on the older O series the option parameters (900s) are not punched out with the parameters......unless you hold ; (eob) while pressing output, then you get all of them. But you also need to punch out the diagnostics which will be the PMC parameters which are 300s. They will punch out as N10300 and so on.
Feel free to add, make corrections and ask questions.
I am going to make this a sticky as I think it is one of if not the most important part of machine ownership.