How FANUC Goes Above and Beyond to Support Machine Tool Builders Integrating FANUC Controls

Change is hard and that’s why FANUC helps machine tool builders make the FANUC CNC switch!

Even though FANUC is one of the most popular CNC platforms throughout the world and is consistently voted by Control Design Magazine’s readers as the No. 1 control, some machine tool builders unfamiliar with FANUC controls can be reluctant to use them. FANUC is a Service First company that prioritizes customer support. That means when machine tool builders turn to FANUC for help to create their specialized machines with FANUC CNCs, we are there for them.

Below are two stories of machine tool builders that had been using another CNC brand and for different reasons – a customer’s request and supply chain issues, respectively – made the switch to FANUC and found themselves with a partner they could rely on.

FANUC America Supports US Machine Tool Builder to Supply Next-Gen Fuels Effort

Nations around the world are advancing their alternative fuels strategies to help reduce carbon emissions. Japan sees hydrogen as the key to decarbonizing its economy while sustaining industrial competitiveness. The country recently announced its plans to increase its annual hydrogen supply to 3 million tonnes in 2030.

To support these efforts, Japanese metal fabricator Kawatex is developing high-pressure hydrogen tanks for storing the alternative fuel. The company recently tapped MJC Engineering, the only US manufacturer of CNC metal forming machines, to design and build a machine making aluminum liners for high-pressure hydrogen cylinders. However, MJC used another brand of controls for over two decades and Kawatex was interested in using a Japanese control supplier.

“We then started talking to FANUC and figured out if their controller could handle our custom designed machines,” says Carl Lorentzen, President of MJC Engineering. “The FANUC controllers are the most used worldwide, but our application for metal forming machines is quite different and a little bit unusual.”

MJC uses hydraulics in their CNC machines and needs the advanced capabilities of CNCs to manipulate the machine’s kinematics to perform all the positioning. To achieve this, MJC implemented the FANUC 31i-B 5 CNC with FANUC’s powerful motors and drives in their metal flow forming and spinning machines.

“With the 31i-B 5, which is the FANUC 5-axis control that we're using, there's a lot of standard features in that control,” says Chris Britton, Account Manager for FANUC America. “But there's also a lot of optional features that can fully customize how that 31i-B 5 interfaces with these metal spinning machines.”

FANUC America’s engineers helped train MJC on the FANUC platform as well as implementing the control system on their products.

“We have been pleasantly surprised with the support that we've gotten from FANUC,” says Lorentzen. “Their technical people have been helping us many days to make sure that this works.”

Now, MJC Engineering has started to offer the FANUC CNC platform on its Green Hydraulic Power (GHP) product. This turnkey system provides hydraulic pressure and flow on demand through an innovative power delivery system. Traditional hydrogen power is typically provided by continually running at high speeds, which wastes energy and fluid as well as creates an extremely loud working environment. With GHP now using FANUC’s Power Motion i to control FANUC’s highly reliable servos, the system delivers the hydraulic pressure only when needed, which generates less heat, uses up to 70 percent less energy, reduces noise emissions by up to 20 decibels and is Industry 4.0 ready.

Success Abroad as FANUC Helps Austrian MTB HAGE Produce New Friction Stir Welding Machine

Austrian machine builder HAGE Sondermaschinenbau quickly developed a new automated system for friction stir welding of battery trays using FANUC products. Despite the company’s inexperience with FANUC, HAGE was able to deliver the specialized machine to the customer in under a year due to FANUC Austria’s full project support as well as short product delivery times.

“Friction stir welding is a very new and innovative manufacturing process and this welding technique is predominately used for aluminum,” says Tobias Pirker, Project Manager for HAGE.

To achieve this solution, HAGE used the FANUC CNC Series 30i-B Plus controller because of its high reliability and productivity as well as being capable of some of the fastest cycle times in the industry. Additionally, HAGE implemented a FANUC M-900iB/330L robot, which has a high payload capacity of 330 kg and extended long reach of 3203mm, to fully automate the production line.

Even though HAGE has relied on another control platform brand for decades, the project’s speedy progress proved the decision to build with FANUC was the right one.

“The innovation of this system is the highly automated and fast manufacturing process, completed with the innovative and fast force control process of the FANUC CNC controller,” says Pirker.

Unfamiliarity with FANUC CNCs can create a barrier for some machine tool builders to use the platform. However, FANUC consistently provided immediate answers to HAGE’s questions enabling the machine tool builder to shorten the time to market.

“FANUC impressed us from start to finish,” says Peter Freigassner-Sanchez, Technical Managing Director for HAGE.

HAGE also attended a comprehensive training course at FANUC to learn how best to implement FANUC’s technology as well as additional CNC functions and features, such as using FANUC’s tool management and the six-spindle synchronization to optimize the system’s performance.

“The FANUC experts properly supported us there for two and a half weeks to launch our product onto the market as quickly as possible,” says Klaus Baumgartner, CNC Programmer for HAGE.

The result is an advanced and automated specialized friction stir welding machine that has already been delivered to the customer. Ensuring even more battery trays can be rapidly and efficiently produced, an additional system is on the way to HAGE’s customer.

Baumgartner says contributing to the success of the project was “a short lead time and a programming time taking four months to market readiness, which is already very, very good.” However, the true proof of success is that in ten months despite “the market environment with the delivery situation—we now see the product.”