CNC milling machine replacement MB

No clue about anything in this thread but the machine interests me. The machine shop where I worked had rows of CNC machines that were fully enclosed. Is there a reason yours is open? Seems it would be messy.
I dunno, dad doesn't like the enclosed machines so that's his preference.... however we are currently talking with A-Trump about another machine that is the exact same as this one but fully enclosed. This one is messy because we've been running a lot of plastic parts and the vacuum works well for cleaning those chips. We've seen enclosed machines before and if they are not sealed well they will leak coolant, most of the times with plastic we just use air and we have a unit that applies a special fluid that is air operated that blows it on the tool, it's like a coolant mister but they don't call it that, from what I've been told is that Ford uses these units in their transmission plants where they work mostly with aluminum but we've found they work great for plastic too and they have different types of fluid depending on what you are machining but we've just been using their universal one. I've been told that for it to work well on S.S. you need a different fluid that has a higher flash point but we have coolant for those jobs. I think he doesn't like the enclosed ones because of cleaning them out which seems harder, he does talk about cnc lathes that have a conveyor that will clean the chips out into a barrel but our lathe doesn't have that feature nor was an option.

The main difference between the older machines and this new one is how the control talks to the sensors on the machine, controlling the motors, etc... the old setup they used serial cables to the computer which has a controller card inside which is similar to a typical expansion card that plugs into the slot on the motherboard, these new ones I believe are fiber optic and goes to a special unit that converts it over to ethernet which that cable is then run to the PC.

We currently have 4 CNC milling machines and a CNC lathe which is mostly the one I'm running.
 
Thanks for the reply, didn't mean to derail the thread. My work was married to Haas. They machined steel, aluminum, plastics, and carbon fiber. Last new machine was a turning center or something? Most machines had the conveyor thing. The carbon fiber made a mess of the coolant recovery system.
 
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Haas is a good machine, we went to look at a leased enclosed CNC bedmill in Mooresville NC, at the time it was Ginn Racing during the time when Mark Martin was driving part time for them in the Chevrolet Army car after all those years of driving the Ford Valvoline and then changed to the other sponsor whom I will remain nameless. Their shop was all Haas except for the Centroid that was on loan for trial, evidently they are/were big into racing. They didn't really use it that much and I don't remember what they were asking for it but he was scared of it being enclosed and it didn't really fit in with how we do things but I guess now he's finally starting to realize that times change.

I think he said the one we purchased last year was around $60k and they want $65k for the enclosed version, actually doesn't sound bad considering it's a year later and also the delivered price went way up in the quote from last year too which is where most of the price increase came from. I don't know how much the leased model was when we looked at it.
 
I know a good centroid repair shop if you need it
I've got this machine fixed but the other one I've been working with a guy from the Pacific North West area who has been very helpful so far. I have an issue where both sticks of memory won't pass the memory tests but one works just fine, I've tried two different sets of memory and the only conclusion I can come up with is it's something to do with the board.... can't say I'm surprised that's what you deal with used parts and this one came from overseas so can't really return or exchange it now.

He said 512mb is just fine to use if I couldn't get it to work like it should. I've seen this before but usually it's just one of the sticks is bad, the weird part is both will pass the memory tests when tested separately but once you have them installed together it fails. I've also seen it where one of the slots is bad but seems to pass in either one.... Kinda clueless on this one and only conclusion I can come up with is it's the board that's bad. I need to get this thing up and running it's been down for 3 months now but hopefully not too much longer. He's going to create me a disk with the newer version of software so it will be the same as two of our other machines.

I think for now we're going to have to use it as is but I'll keep my eye out for another board to keep as a spare.
 
I've got this machine fixed but the other one I've been working with a guy from the Pacific North West area who has been very helpful so far. I have an issue where both sticks of memory won't pass the memory tests but one works just fine, I've tried two different sets of memory and the only conclusion I can come up with is it's something to do with the board.... can't say I'm surprised that's what you deal with used parts and this one came from overseas so can't really return or exchange it now.

He said 512mb is just fine to use if I couldn't get it to work like it should. I've seen this before but usually it's just one of the sticks is bad, the weird part is both will pass the memory tests when tested separately but once you have them installed together it fails. I've also seen it where one of the slots is bad but seems to pass in either one.... Kinda clueless on this one and only conclusion I can come up with is it's the board that's bad. I need to get this thing up and running it's been down for 3 months now but hopefully not too much longer. He's going to create me a disk with the newer version of software so it will be the same as two of our other machines.

I think for now we're going to have to use it as is but I'll keep my eye out for another board to keep as a spare.
Is 512MB the biggest stick that board will take or could you try a single 1GB stick?
 
Is 512MB the biggest stick that board will take or could you try a single 1GB stick?

I downloaded the manual and it only shows 512mb per slot and doesn't say anything about 1gb sticks.

Still making progress, we've paid Centroid for the data recovery which was only $180 and I'm surprised at that because when you get into data recovery it typically costs a lot of money.... however she did say that they weren't able to recover everything from the drive and I had her email me what they were able too... I didn't get any of our programs back, I could see other files and folders but not really anything in the way of the programs we would've created for the jobs we run.... so I feel that $180 was a huge waste but I guess on the frontend we didn't really know what they were able to retrieve. The other guy I was working with had Centroid create the disk for us using a CF card, he also imported the configuration from another 1996 Supermax YCM-40 machine so we should be at least up and running when it gets here but there may be some troubleshooting and sending files back and forth over email afterwards. I felt like if we would've had Centroid create us the disk in the beginning we would've been stuck after the sale, at least by using this guy it seems like he is willing to at least help us where they couldn't.

He said the cost of the disk is $320 and then about another $10 to ship it to us, really not bad considering we were looking into at least $1k if not more to fix this thing, he hasn't billed us yet but hopefully not much longer. I haven't priced out the "new" PC that I had to build but I did mostly use all new parts when I could. I think the only used parts are the motherboard, cpu, controller card, and DVD drive. I didn't really have to install the DVD but it will make it a lot easier if I have to work on and troubleshoot in the future, evidently it's not USB bootable but I found a loader program that boots of a disc but then loads the USB drivers for you and then boots from a flash drive.... it kinda defeats the purpose but I will only need that one CD and I can keep creating anything I want on flash drives instead of using up CD's.

Last I heard about a "new" retrofit cost is at least $10k if not more now but then it replaces basically everything, servo motors, totally new updated control w/ Windows 10 and a touchscreen, the only thing leftover that's used is the basic machine itself and actually there are people buying the older machines because they typically have a lot of life left but the controls are outdated so they have them retrofitted. Another problem is knee mills, the industry has mostly shifted away from them to focus more on bed mills and when dealing with a Centroid control our choices are limited unless be get another machine and retrofit then you could install any control you want on any machine. I know A Trump still makes manual knee mills but they don't offer any with a Centroid installed, I haven't checked other manufacturers but there isn't many offering Centroid so choices are limited. We did find Remedy mills but it appears they are just retrofits on an A Trump manual mill but with Centroid controls. Like I said I'll probably try to source another board just to keep on hand but realistically if we can't repair it again we would probably just end up retrofitting this thing, we noticed Remedy is fairly close, they are either in MD or PA, they did move locations from one of these to the other and Centroid is in PA themselves so even though they couldn't really help us with a retrofit they could most likely put us in contact with someone who can.
 
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