New Machine Day

I took the plunge and replaced my tired 1986 Deckel FP2NC with a DN Solutions DEM4000. The machine showed up in light drizzle yesterday. Vierra Trucking out of Castro Valley handled the shipping and rigging. They did a great job and I highly recommend them.




May garage ceiling is max about 103" and I knew going in that I had to chop a notch above my garage door. Fortunately, the structural beam is above the notch. The worst part of the job was lifting and lowering one side of the roll-up door while it was in the open position, without the door coming off the tracks. Garage door springs are a PITA even when relaxed.



I chewed on the choice of replacement machine for months before settling on the DEM 4000. I was looking for a machine that would be partly for model-making, partly to support my engineering consulting job, and parly to help educate students on the local high school robotics team. I wanted to get away from the Deckel's gear noise, poor chip containment, mist coolant, Dialog control speed limitations, and lack of ATC. I considered:

Hardinge Bridgeport V710 - compact and I got a great price quote on a heavily-optioned machine, but it was too much machine for my garage utilities and my needs, still above my budget, with 12k direct-drive spindle with chiller, and the direct-drive spindle made it tall.

Hurco VM10i - would have been a great choice for my needs, but SF Bay Area dealer support is non-existent. I met a local shop owner at IMTS, and he warned me about poor Bay Area support. He has a couple Hurcos that have been down waiting for service. I also never got any follow-up from Hurco even though I talked to them at IMTS.

Haas VF1 - great control that I know how to run, good local support, good price, but they're tall enough to require adding a skylight in the garage ceiling, plus you get what you pay for. That is offset by good resale value.

Haas Super-Mini - Not enough Z travel and umbrella tool changer.

Haas TM-0P - Even I can find the rigidity limits of a TM, and they are also tall.

Fryer MC-L - nice size but not popular enough to get a warm & fuzzy feeling about buying one.

DN Solutions DEM 4000 - not too tall, compatible with my utilities (but might have to buy a bigger compressor), 20-tool side-mount ATC, chip auger, and Renishaw probe receiver. I saw one in action at IMTS and liked what I saw. Ellison was good about following up afterwards. Funny thing, the machine looked small at McCormick Place but looks huge in my garage. The control is a basic Fanuc Oi-MF, so good for teaching and consulting, but maybe not as good as a conversational control for model-making. (The 1986 Deckel Dialog control was amazingly good for one-off work, and very user-friendly despite being 37 years old. I owned the machine for 16 years.)

I am very impressed with the apparent DEM built quality. Fit and finish are excellent, fittings are top quality, and the frame seems really beefy. It makes the high school's open Haas TM-1 look like a toy in comparison.

The next steps are to hook up the DEM's utilities and get the Ellison tech to come in, stick on the chip auger chute, take off the shipping brackets, level it up, and show me the basics.

congrats on the new iron! what are the travels on a that unit? i'm hoping to be heavy in the market for a doosan vmc in the first quarter of 23

Travels are 22x16x18.

Congrats !

I had to notch the frame above my garage door years back too for my first machine. Glad to see I'm not the only one !

Congrats!
The DN also has EZ Guide i in the control for graphical programming capability. If you'd like the training manual I wrote for it, PM me.

DouglasJRizzo said:

Congrats!
The DN also has EZ Guide i in the control for graphical programming capability. If you'd like the training manual I wrote for it, PM me.

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I did not think the 10.4" screen Fanuc Oi-MF Plus that I got came with EZ Guide i.

rklopp said:

I did not think the 10.4" screen Fanuc Oi-MF Plus that I got came with EZ Guide i.

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It might. They used to do it on 10.4" displays.
Press "Shift" and "S1" together, it should turn on.
Press "program" to turn it off.

I don't have power to the machine yet, but I'll check it out. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I got it with the machine, because the options list has EZ Guide i Xed-out and said not available for that level of control. I was happy to see that they threw in the Renishaw receiver without my asking. No probe, of course, as that's where the big bucks lie.

Will this machine fit under a standard 7 FT garage door? I just placed a deposit on the IMTS model but am hoping to not have to cut a notch in the header to fit it in. It was between this machine and another haas super mini and the Z travel along with the tool changer and rigidity all make this machine the clear winner for me. I am very curious if these can go in garages without too much work. Thank you and congrats!

I would not expect to get the side-mount changer DEM 4000 under a 7-ft header. The machine is at the very least 85" tall and that's with no leveler feet or anything else between it and the ground. I recommend playing it safe with the height and width of the opening and giving yourself lots of margin. I am very glad I did, because it was a squeeze fit even then. The availability of side-shift on the riggers forklift made it a lot easier to deal with the tight side clearance in my case.

I am waiting on shipments for some cable lugs and stock for a setup test piece before I call Ellison to do the final installation and leveling.

Better rigidity and faster control, but Fanuc sucked so much, back in the Dialog4 days.
Do they at least have graphic simulation nowadays?
Until Fanuc 21T, mid 1990s, they don't or only option for lots of money.
The simple Dialog4 2D top view sim helps a lot, doing complex 2D things, would hate working/hand coding without it.
Linear scales and universal table are also things I would miss.

I agree graphics simulation is a machine and tooling saver. The Fanuc Oi-Mf Plus control that comes with the DEM 4000 is the most basic Fanuc that DN sells, but it has 3D simulation AFAIK. I have not tried it, because final install and hookup is still pending. The main problem with Dialog 4 is that it is horribly slow and chokes on modern CAM output that any Haas or Fanuc can handle easily. Dialog 4 does OK on finger-CAMed code with heavy reliance on canned cycles, but finger-CAMing is very tedious, error-prone and hardly amenable to complicated geometry, even 2D.

rklopp said:

I agree graphics simulation is a machine and tooling saver.

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Not to get into an argument or claim the dialog 4 is wonderful but .... you guys really like programming at the control ? I did some somewhat complex parts (not surfacing complex but not just squares with round corners either) on controls that had nixie tube display. All the brains went into the offline computer. Sit down at the comfy desk, work on a nice big screen, write the program and verify it, then out to the dirty area and trust the control to just do what it's told.

You'd really rather stand there with a print in one hand and type at the control with the other ?

EmanuelGoldstein said:

Not to get into an argument or claim the dialog 4 is wonderful but .... you guys really like programming at the control ? I did some somewhat complex parts (not surfacing complex but not just squares with round corners either) on controls that had nixie tube display. All the brains went into the offline computer. Sit down at the comfy desk, work on a nice big screen, write the program and verify it, then out to the dirty area and trust the control to just do what it's told.

You'd really rather stand there with a print in one hand and type at the control with the other ?

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Unfortunately, hand code at the control was really the best way to run Dialog. Hand code via offline computer and then upload was tough because Dialog was not at all forgiving of even the tiniest syntax error. An error often froze the control and necessitated a hard reset. And, as I said, CAM code was too bloated and it choked the control. Undoubtedly a better post would have helped. The Dialog look-ahead might as well have been look-behind .

Dialog4 is quite slow, Fanuc 3T on Okuma-Howa ACT4 seems much faster, even though it's 4years older, 1982.
Even Dialog11 stalls hard, stops feeding for like 1/2 sec, if using dynamic parameters with a little math.

But no graphics sim makes anything Fanuc from that time suck quite hard, for prototype/hobby stuff.
Lathe is even worse than mill, because you can't stop feed in things like threads and crashing into the chuck is much worse than breaking an endmill.
Fanuc with simple D4 graphics instead of useless FAPT would have been sooo nice.
For example, a socket for round slotted nut, graphic sim, dry test run in wood, final part

DeadMahoDude said:

Dialog4 is quite slow, Fanuc 3T on Okuma-Howa ACT4 seems much faster, even though it's 4years older, 1982.
Even Dialog11 stalls hard, stops feeding for like 1/2 sec, if using dynamic parameters with a little math.

But no graphics sim makes anything Fanuc from that time suck quite hard, for prototype/hobby stuff.
Lathe is even worse than mill, because you can't stop feed in things like threads and crashing into the chuck is much worse than breaking an endmill.
Fanuc with simple D4 graphics instead of useless FAPT would have been sooo nice.
For example, a socket for round slotted nut, graphic sim, dry test run in wood, final part

Click to expand...

excellent!