Get More Out of Your CNC: FANUC’s Fast Cycle Time Technology

To help programmers and shops get the best machine tool performance, FANUC introduced Fast Cycle Time Technology— a suite of functions designed to improve productivity. Many people ask if they need to buy Fast Cycle Time separately. Well, no, because it already comes built into our 30i-B and 0i-F CNC series, including the latest Plus controls.

We have noticed, however, many machines and/or programs do not fully take advantage of these features. Read on to learn more about how these optimizing features can boost your productivity by saving you time without sacrificing quality!

What is Fast Cycle Time Technology?

Fast Cycle Time Technology is, in short, interpolation planning, specifically designed for rapid positioning moves. To explain in another way, picture cars racing on a track. One car can perform better by its driver adjusting when and where she brakes and accelerates, such as accelerating out of a corner, or in other words, picking the fastest line. Fast Cycle Time Technology are those inputs informing the braking and accelerating decisions.

Fast Cycle Time aims at getting improvements out of low-hanging fruit, such as in positioning for spot drilling, drilling and tapping. Parts that require many of these types of operations will see a significant reduction in cycle time. Additionally, because only non-cutting moves are affected, surface quality is untouched.

Will Fast Cycle Time Technology work on every machine?

Every machine is different and may be set up differently. However, FANUC has performed testing on a variety of configurations, based on spindle/tool combinations, and created default values for acceleration and motions parameters.  Also, since most benefits are during non-cutting position moves, tuning is not normally required.

While an ideal setup would require machine specific tuning, machines for general purposes are normally significantly lower than peak efficiency range. Fast Cycle Time helps elevate the baseline for machines that are reasonably well tuned and free of mechanical issues.

What are the components of Fast Cycle Time Technology?

Fast Cycle Time Technology does not include advanced features like tolerance control and is independent of TCP, but does involve:

-  The “Easy Setting” screen

-  Acc/dec features

-  Smart rigid tapping

-  Improvements to rapid traverse block overlap