Siemens 810D with Shop Turn

[#Rekd™]

I am looking at a lathe with a Siemens 810D with Shop Turn and would like to know if it is a decent controller? Is it easy to operate?

 

Thanks

[Guest]

I don't know how it is up your way but down in my neck of the woods Siemens controllers are "mostly" an unknown quantity. We see only a few of them.

[Newbeeee™]

We're running a machine (Yr 2009) with shopturn and love it.

We went from fanuc OTA and mastercam programming, and wanted to upgrade the machine to something a lot quicker, as most of our work is small batch.

We bought a prototrak and the ease of that programming blew me away.

So we looked at the latest fanuc with its manual guide and was not impressed at all.

Then looked at the siemens and it's nearly as simple as the prototrak. Not quite as simple, but it will do more as well.

For 2axis work you can't beat programming on the machine. A cycle for everything and great graphics for verifying.

The machine has a C, which is handy for orientating for bar pulling, but unfortunately no driven tooling.

Looking at the canned cycles (question and answers - just fill in the blanks) for C axis programming, this looks easy peasy as well.

The biggest thing is that it is different, and providing you/your operators want to learn it, you'll be flying in no time.

HTH

[#Rekd™]

I think they are growing in use and popularity from what I can tell. I think shops are moving away from Fanuc?

 

Just looking for somebody who has used it before.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I think they are growing in use and popularity from what I can tell. I think shops are moving away from Fanuc?

 

Just looking for somebody who has used it before.

It's not the shops per se, Siemans is offering them for DIRT cheap so it impacts the price of the lower end to mid-range machines considerably.

[#Rekd™]

It's not the shops per se, Siemans is offering them for DIRT cheap so it impacts the price of the lower end to mid-range machines considerably.

 

Are they a decent control James?

[Newbeeee™]

They were standard fitment on a lot of matsuura's range for a while. Wouldn't be junk if the big M specced them.

Lokk on youtube and search for shopturn. It wil give you a very good idea of what it can do.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

It is definitely more than a decent control. Their flagship; the 840D is THE most powerful control. It's the fastest as far as BPT, look-Ahead, and raw horsepower under the hood. Bar none. Of course the Heid guys may have something to say about that but hey... That's my take and I'm sticking to it.

 

There's only 3 real drawbacks to the controls... number of users, it's a lot different from a FANUC/FANUC Compatible Control, and support. Support and Users are lacking here in the states so you're going to be on your own for a lot of stuff. We've got a few 840's in the field and I don't like them for that reason alone. Blum has 1, yes ONE tech that is well versed in them. Renishaw I think has 1 or two. That's a real problem from my perspective. It means that I'm on my own to figure most stuff out. If you get the machine with that control, you won't lack features or capability. You may bang your head a bit until you get used to it, but , you will get used to it and most users I talk to grow to like them.

[DavidB]

It's not that the Seimens is cheap it's that Fanuc over charge!

[Grievous]

+1 Sinumerik. Like CNC Apps Guy said: THE most powerful control.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

David, that was an ignorant statement.

 

FANUC actually manufactures ALL of it's own hardware. Everything is completely proprietary. Memory chips CPU's, etc...It's not like Siemens... where with the exception of the servo drives/amps you can go to any computer store and get parts for it. That's not overcharging, that's covering your expenses... and when your control's MTBF is measured in the MILLIONS of hours... that kind of reliability costs a bit extra. Siemens CANNOT make that MTBF claim. FANUC Parts on the shelf for 25 years... Siemans cannot make than claim either. Is FANUC expensive? Yes, without question. Could they reduce the cost on some options where they've CLEARLY made their ROI, yes, no question, but as far as overcharging... I don't think so.

[Chris Rizzo]

MTBF

 

Machine Tool Builders "Fortunes, Failures, Frauds, Free-for-All"? .........................

 

What's the F stand for?

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Neither,

 

Mean

Time

Between

Failure