[Japazo]

My company has been running a 2008 Mag-Fadal 4020 for about 4 years now. The machine came equipped with only flood coolant, no thru-coolant or air blast. I noticed pretty quickly that activating the mist coolant button turned on one of the solenoid operated air valves on the bottom of the electrical cabinet, which was purposely plugged. I removed the plug and routed a 1/4" poly line up through the cable track and down to a home-built manifold connected to the coolant manifold. This gave me a really quick and easy, and programmable, air blast.

We just purchased a second machine which has thru-coolant. The thru-coolant is tied to the mist-cool button on the controller and operates using the same M07 command as the air blast on my other machine. I have two questions regarding this.

First, I know there is at least one unused air valve on the manifold behind the machine (no line connected to it). There may be others that have erroneous lines connected to them but don't do anything. How would I go about finding a way to activate that unused valve in order to mimic the air blast I have on the first machine? It should be tied to some command on the controller if it is installed on the machine, right? If not, is there any way to create a command to activate it?

Second, and slightly similar to the first, if there is a way to create a command to activate that air valve, then is there a way to change the thru-coolant to M50 like many other MTB's use and revert the M07 back to the air blast? That would allow me to run any program on either machine without changing the coolant commands. Worst case, I would have to change the M50's back to M08's on the flood-cool machine, but that wouldn't be likely to happen often.

Am I opening a can of worms I have no right to be messing with?
Any insight would be highly appreciated since I'm running a line into the machine from an air-gun right now in order to have air blast on the new machine. This is not programmable and uses a TON more air than the automatic on-off of the other machine.

[Japazo]

Boy, I'm getting no love here lately!

[ifixcnc]

I worked on Fadals before the MAG days, so my info maybe dated. Check your schematic for any spair M codes, and wire that to an un-used valve.

[Japazo]

OK,

So what I found out was that the machine had the option installed for a pallet changer, but no pallet changer itself. M60 activates the unused solenoid valve and M61 turns it off.

I can tackle this two ways. The hillbilly way would be to create a custom post in my programming software to have it output M60 for the air blast option and turn it off with M61 at the end of every tool.

The proper way (in my opinion) is what I mentioned before, changing thru-coolant to M50 and switching the M60 to M07. Then I just have to make sure M05 turns everything off. I would probably have to tie the thru-coolant to another button on the controller as well, like the washdown button.

How in depth is the second option? Is this something that I could learn to do without going back to school for a semester to figure it out? I can handle option 1 for now until I figure out the right way to do this. I just don't like putting band-aids on things, and I like all of my machines to be as universal as possible for the sake of interchangeability.

On a side note, does anyone know what the PK1 - PK4 buttons are on the FANUC 0i controller?

[motionman]

M60 and M61 are the brake commands for a 4th axis.

[Japazo]

hmm, according to all the 0i manuals M10 and M11 are brake and un-brake for a fourth axis. Those same manuals all say that M60 and M61 command a pallet changer. I'll have to check my other machine (which has a 4th axis) to see which solenoids are activated using those commands.

[motionman]

Sorry, I just saw the year of the machine, this may be correct on the latter models