I had an opportunity to put the Fanuc Manual Guidance i through its paces at a customer last week. I like the mill version, it has a lot of useful tools for programming on the control. I never really appreciated the lathe version because I thought it was redundant. The lathe already has canned cycles. G71-G76. I have a whole new appreciation for what it can do after last week. I still prefer G76 for threading and G83 for drilling, but two features are quite powerful. One is rough and finish contouring. You draw your finish part to blueprint, then your stock connecting the geometry into a closed loop. The tools have a table describing their style and radius. The control generates a 4 digit G code with variables describing conditions and parameters. Cutter comp is handled in the control like a Mazak. You save the geometry as a sub the rough and finish cycles both use. The other powerful feature was finish grooving. You can describe both o.d. corner radii as well as the floor radii, as well as the angle of the walls. Since it is essentially a pictographic code generator you have to insert beginning and ending format for your operations. Tool and spindle information and approach stategy as well as exit strategy for the ending of operations can be saved and pasted at the beginning and end of operations. It has a pretty nice graphics package and simulator function. Over all once I got over the learning curve I was quite impressed with the Manual Guidance i for lathes.
- posted
17 years ago