Siber Hegner RB-1 CNC ???????

I was considering doing a conversion on a charter oak RF45 clone. Now I have an opportunity to purchase a Siber hegner RB-1 CNC machine. It is similar to the one in the following Ebay posting.

Siber Hegner RB 1 CNC Vertical Miller Inv 29053 | eBay

Anyway does anyone have any experience with this machine. I have not been able to look at it yet but I will soon. I think this will be a much better machine than the charter oak. It is much larger and stiffer. The main question I have is since it is a used machine what may be required to keep it running or upgrade it for better operation.

How difficult would it be to upgrade the electronics control from the old Fanuc controller to Mach. Do you typically need to replace the servo drives or can you simply interface a smoothstepper to the existing axis drives?

Would I need to replace the axis drive motors also or just upgrade the servo drives?

The machine works as it sets now. I hope to see it run when I go to look at it. What tests should I run on the machine? I will try to run some backlash test on the machine but it may have compensation enabled.

Any advise is welcome.

I was able to go and look at the machine this afternoon. it is in really good shape. The box ways look fabulous. There is very little backlash, about 0.001" on x, and y with 0.000 on z. They ways are extremely tight with no play. It is a 5500 lb monster. Moving it will be interesting.

I could not tell if the screws are ball screws or if they are acme screws. I would assume with that little of backlash that they are ball screws. They are covered with a flat coil spring type cover so I could not see the screw directly.

My biggest concern is with the Fanuc 0M control and the Siemens Simodrive servo drives.

The Fanuc 0M control works well right now. What happens if it quits. Also how large of a program can the Fanuc 0M hold. When do I need to start drip feeding the program to the machine. I was not able to try to download a program to the machine. The owner never did a program transfer just did manual programming on the Fanuc display.

The servo motors are huge and I am not sure that I would be able to replace the drives with gecko drive if the existing Siemens drive were to fail.

It still sound like a good deal to me if the machine continues to work. I am just a little worried about what I will have to do when something decides not to work.

let me know what you think. Should I get this machine which is much more of a machine with old electronics or should i get a much smaller machine with new electronics.

Did you end up getting this mill?

Metzenw,

I did purchase the mill. I knew when I bought it that I could not transfer programs on to the Fanuc controller. I thought that I could fix that issue and retain the Fanuc controls without much expense. Turned out that the main board was shorted out due to swarf getting into the cabinet.

I decided to retrofit to LinuxCNC. You can see my retrofit thread here LinuxCNC :: Topic: RB1-CNC Retrofit (1/5)

I see that you are going to need to retrofit controls on your lathe. Let me know if you want to use LinuxCNC. I may be of some assistance.

if anyone has one of these mills and needs an original manual for it, hit me up. my grandfather designed this mill, and is on the cover of the manual. I have number 6 of 6 of the original binders.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tattoosbyjason1978

if anyone has one of these mills and needs an original manual for it, hit me up. my grandfather designed this mill, and is on the cover of the manual. I have number 6 of 6 of the original binders.

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I'm interested in one if you still have any available!