Wow, this was a long time ago. Our Cimatron post guy just called me up. He has a customer with shiny new OKK that Fanuc can't make work right after installing TCP and TWP. They've been trying for two weeks. He said it's like deja vu all over again. Had to look this up to refresh my memory. That and I sent him some pics of the parameters we ended up with on our Enshus after Fanuc couldn't help us. In Fanuc's defense, he did mention that he's went through this process two other times since our debacle and those Fanuc guys had the machines running perfect speedy quick.

We have a chitload of these. Used them for about 15 years on 3 Mikron mills. Still work great, but now we use Haimer shrinkers for the really fussy stuff.

Much cheaper than the electrician's bill will be. I don't know specifics of what or how it works, but this is what it looks like...

Our sister company was recently the victim of a very costly ransomware attack. This prompted the boss to take our security a little more seriously. We have 3 Roeders machines with Windows controls. I refuse to allow them to install any Windows updates or AV junk on them. So they run to a switch that in turn runs to a magic box that blocks them from the interwebz, but allows them access to a specific network location to pull programs. The nerds claim this system is impervious to outside attack. Then we have 3 Mikrons with Heidenhain iTNC530s. The IT guys want us to run a cable to the same switch the Roeders plug into. This is a big undertaking. They are located across an aisle that's traversed by an overhead bridge crane. We'd have to have an electrician come out with a lift to run a mile of cable up and over the crane. Might even require moving a machine. My question is, what is the security vulnerability of the iTNC530 control? What are the odds of some hacker in his mom's basement in Ukraine exploiting the control and getting into our network? I'm guessing slim to none, but don't want to discount the possibility entirely.

Because we were too cheap to send large blocks out for gundrilling, we silver soldered 7/16", jobber length drills into looooooooong pieces of O-1 drill rod for use in a radial drill or boring mill. We would often drill through 48" long plates like this, drilling 24" from each end. The silver soldered joint was never a problem. How "on center" you could sharpen a drill, by hand, was the biggest issue.

So I now have the second machine working too. Parameter 1832. Machine had numbers in the boxes for each axis. Zeroed them all out, now it works. Unlike other parameters, 1832 has no name, no indication of what it actually does.

Yoda was unreachable, but the guy at Cimatron who wrote our post is relentless. 5312 turned out to be the fix for one of our machines. He found this in some Fanuc documentation... Don't ask my why Fanuc or Enshu couldn't find this. We had zeros in all the boxes. Set X 200, Y 200, Z 2500 and it ran like a champ. Like a dumbarse, I set the other machine the same, but didn't test it. Today when we tried to run a job with rigid tapping on a TWP, it approached to the clearance plane and stopped. Just sat there, no error, just sat. The operator toggled to manual and back to remote, then hit cycle start. The spindle fired up and it tapped to the bottom of the hole. Where it again stopped. Toggling to manual, back to remote, cycle start didn't make it start up. We use quick change tap holders, so we just released the tap and backed it out by hand. So progress has been made. But not 100% there just yet.

That's all you have to do?

Our operators aren't really adverse to work, it's change the fight tooth and nail. We run our 5X Roeders lights out and balls to the wall. They never had a chance to run it the old way because I refused to program it the old way. When I ask why we can't run other machines in a similar fashion, the excuses go on for days. I did convince one today to actually turn the rapid from 50 to 100% on one of the new Enshus. The program had already been successfully ran on one block, so why not crank it up and let her tip on #2? Holy chit those things are fast.

Operators don't work for me, I am NOT their boss, and they are quick to tell me so. You shoulda heard the weeping and gnashing of teeth when I told all my programmers to start posting programs with real speeds and feeds, instead of S0 F0. Which the operators used to fill in with whatever numbers they felt like that day. And no, that was not in 1981. It was 2 years ago.

It's honestly the least of our worries around here. Frustrating is watching an operator hand change tools on a machine with a perfectly good tool changer. Or stopping a machine mid program cause it's quittin time and the machine cannot run without the operator standing and watching it.

It really doesn't matter to me. It's the whining from the operators I'm adverse to. If I had my way, we wouldn't rigid tap ANYTHING. We'd thread mill every hole that requires a thread. If we can't reach it, or it's too small, let a toolmaker hand tap the phuker.

But I don't wanna use pitch. I recently had a visit from a couple big shots from Enshu Japan. I sent another email to their US support guys and cc'd the Japanese bosses. See if that gets me some traction.

No such luck. Finally got back to this. We found some weird, unrelated post issues that had to be worked out. And we had ZERO actual work to do in these machines. Which you'd think would be a great time to test things. But instead the operators just go home. Our rigid tap works with the M03 SXXX before the M29 SXXX as long as we're not using G68.2. But just for fun we removed it and tried with G68.2, still hates it. As somebody recommended, stuck a G17 in for S&Gs, also no dice. Here you go...

Here is a known 'good' program with rigid tapping and no TWP... G90 G80 G40 G49 G91 G30 Z0. G90 M906T154 S145 M3 T154 G56 G0 B0. X-2.045 Y-5. G43 Z3.H 154 M8 (AUTO_DRL - M12 TAP) G94 M29 S145 G84 G98 X-2.045 Y-5. Z-.70003 R.19997F10.0000 Y5. R.19997 G80 M9 M19 G91 G30 Z0. G90 G91 G30 X0 Y0 G90 M30 % The S145 M3 after the tool change causes no problems. But I also noticed we do NOT have a G17 thrown into the first line which I could see causing problems in a TWP program. And according to the book, G84 is a tapping cycle and G84.2 is a rigid tapping cycle. I almost NEVER program this kind of stuff for these machines, so I'm a little oblivious to the problems we are having. But for some reason, I'm the guy who has to figure them out. A couple of other tidbits; we had two operators recently leave for greener pastures. Since they left, the kid running the Enshus has been a tap breaking fool. I chalked that up to inexperience. But I also recently changed a parameter that was effecting our drilling cycles. Drills were starting to move in Z before the spindle arrived at the programmed speed. Parameter 3708, bit #0 was changed from 0 to a 1. Not sure if that's causing us trouble with breaking taps. The kid should be out of work tomorrow and I should have time to play around and see what's going on.