Hey everybody I wanted to get your expertise on the subject of factory USB drives. First a bit of background so you can hopefully point me in the right direction.
I make small batches of turned parts, there are around 170 different parts in my catalog currently but its growing fast. Nothing too complicated, most of the programs are between 150 to 200 lines of code and all parts are made using only 4 different sizes of bar stock so things are fairly easy from that perspective. I currently have an Emco Turn 240 and it's running a retrofitted control since the lathe is from 1986. The accuracy of the machine itself so far has been out of this world, I'm still shocked by how good its been. While I can see that the control is kinda junky and glitchy by industrial standards, it does have USB which works very well. I have all my programs organized into folders and I can easily toggle between folders and load up a program immediately. It takes only 2 button clicks to do it. I'm able to have program names that are written in plain english and I don't even have to make the names brief, which is nice. All the names are clearly visible. It doesn't hinder me much that I sometimes need to toggle between programs every 5 or 10 minutes.
Contrast that to a 1997 Haas VF2 which I sometimes use at a friend's shop. While so far I've never come across one single glitch on that control, the downside is that I have to run to the back of the machine, click a few buttons on the DNC device that's plugged into the RS-232 port back there, run back to the front of the machine, hit load and if everything goes well I can run the program. If I make one single mistake in my button pushing, I have to run to the back of the machine again and do everything again. Obviously there's no way for me to have file folders and choose the appropriate program from a list of files written in plain english. The file names have to be very brief and when I'm toggling through them on the DNC device I can only see one file at a time. It's an old machine so I understand that there are going to be inefficiencies but if I owned that particular machine, the back and forth action would be in my opinion totally unacceptable given my catalog of programs that I'm constantly toggling between. That machine is perfectly fine the way my friend runs it because he does hundreds of the same part over and over. Sometimes it runs for days on the same program so it works well for him.
Moving onto my questions now. First question. If I was to look for a used machine, can you guys tell me what year did specific machine tool builders include a USB slot on their machines? It seems like Haas started coming with them in 2007, but I have no idea what year Mazak, Doosan, Mori, Brother, Hurco, Nakamura, or Okuma started coming with USB. I'd like to know since some sellers mention USB and some don't. I'd like to avoid asking every single seller and knowing would help narrow down my search.
Second question. Given my requirements for ease of toggling between programs, maybe you guys can let me know of any other tricks or better devices that allow older machines to work well with a USB key. I've never run a machine with a floppy drive so maybe they have USB emulators for those that work as well as the USB drive on my retrofitted Emco? Let me know what you guys think. Essentially I'm trying to figure out what the oldest machines are that I can purchase that will still allow me to toggle quickly and easily between hundreds of programs once every few minutes. For a lathe, I'll have hundreds of short programs (with a few long ones) and for a mill, I'll have around a hundred programs that are each tens of thousands of lines long.
I make small batches of turned parts, there are around 170 different parts in my catalog currently but its growing fast. Nothing too complicated, most of the programs are between 150 to 200 lines of code and all parts are made using only 4 different sizes of bar stock so things are fairly easy from that perspective. I currently have an Emco Turn 240 and it's running a retrofitted control since the lathe is from 1986. The accuracy of the machine itself so far has been out of this world, I'm still shocked by how good its been. While I can see that the control is kinda junky and glitchy by industrial standards, it does have USB which works very well. I have all my programs organized into folders and I can easily toggle between folders and load up a program immediately. It takes only 2 button clicks to do it. I'm able to have program names that are written in plain english and I don't even have to make the names brief, which is nice. All the names are clearly visible. It doesn't hinder me much that I sometimes need to toggle between programs every 5 or 10 minutes.
Contrast that to a 1997 Haas VF2 which I sometimes use at a friend's shop. While so far I've never come across one single glitch on that control, the downside is that I have to run to the back of the machine, click a few buttons on the DNC device that's plugged into the RS-232 port back there, run back to the front of the machine, hit load and if everything goes well I can run the program. If I make one single mistake in my button pushing, I have to run to the back of the machine again and do everything again. Obviously there's no way for me to have file folders and choose the appropriate program from a list of files written in plain english. The file names have to be very brief and when I'm toggling through them on the DNC device I can only see one file at a time. It's an old machine so I understand that there are going to be inefficiencies but if I owned that particular machine, the back and forth action would be in my opinion totally unacceptable given my catalog of programs that I'm constantly toggling between. That machine is perfectly fine the way my friend runs it because he does hundreds of the same part over and over. Sometimes it runs for days on the same program so it works well for him.
Moving onto my questions now. First question. If I was to look for a used machine, can you guys tell me what year did specific machine tool builders include a USB slot on their machines? It seems like Haas started coming with them in 2007, but I have no idea what year Mazak, Doosan, Mori, Brother, Hurco, Nakamura, or Okuma started coming with USB. I'd like to know since some sellers mention USB and some don't. I'd like to avoid asking every single seller and knowing would help narrow down my search.
Second question. Given my requirements for ease of toggling between programs, maybe you guys can let me know of any other tricks or better devices that allow older machines to work well with a USB key. I've never run a machine with a floppy drive so maybe they have USB emulators for those that work as well as the USB drive on my retrofitted Emco? Let me know what you guys think. Essentially I'm trying to figure out what the oldest machines are that I can purchase that will still allow me to toggle quickly and easily between hundreds of programs once every few minutes. For a lathe, I'll have hundreds of short programs (with a few long ones) and for a mill, I'll have around a hundred programs that are each tens of thousands of lines long.
