fellow machinists: how old is this?

I'm pretty sure it was left here in MN by the first Viking explorers a millenia ago right about the time they left the Kensington runestone, but my date might be off by a few years..

Color screen? Later than 2000 I think.

So I wasn't too far off..

What size is the floppy drive?

Well worn panic button.

Color screen would put it early to mid 2000s would be my guess. I've worked with some from the late '90s that looked like they should have been from the late '80s.

I don't see any vacuum tubes, so your good on that front! It's almost worst seeing equipment boasting its "Solid State"!

Being how that says Fanuc, I'm going with a circa 2015 for that one :)

Seriously, what control is that? It looks like a refitted GE Fanuc control from the early 2000s.. The new ones still pretty much look that way :)

i think it was a GE Fanuc 18something controller.. i didn't look too close, as i hate the machine that it is attached to since i'm a mill guy and it's a New Century lathe.. i took that pic out of boredom waiting for a part to run with a 40 minute cycle time that should be a 15 minute cycle time if it was on a better machine with better programmers. it's just a face cut, id cut, and 54 holes drilled into a 42" diameter ring that is .625 thick, but they have the rapids turned way down and tool changes seriously take 2 minutes each because they crashed it a decade ago when they didn't know how to cnc at this company yet and they are still paranoid..

i'm also not too familiar with Fanuc controllers as i learned my mad cnc skillz on an older (1997 vintage) Fadal, then jumped onto newer Milltronics and Haas mills when i got this job 2 years ago. everything is counter intuitive on Fanuc controllers to me.

We used to install color AB Panel Views (I think that's what they were) on machines we built in the late 90's. Maybe they were a bit behind the times.

Edit: the CNC class I took back then taught conversational on Hurco Mills. Never made a lick of sense to me.

GE Fanuc partnership dissolved in 2009, so it's not any newer than that.

Color screen doesn't mean much, as displays can be retrofitted, when an old one burns out, as we've had to do, on a 1994 machine. I'm currently running a 1978 machine that could've had a color display, but we didn't feel the need to spend an extra $200 for it; monotone gray is just fine.

What I think dates that, are the funky '80s buttons. I'd guess it's a late '80s-early '90s machine. There should be a plate on the electrical control panel/box, with serial number and date of manufacture. Go on, take a peek. I'm dying to know!

I don't see a tape reel or air/vac lines, so it can't be that old.

we have an old Mitsubishi dual pallet horizontal that was built in 1993.. it's still got the slot for the tape reader, but it was retrofitted to new Fanuc brains somewhere along the lines.. i hate that machine more than the lathe that i posted the pic of- it likes to error out in weird ways, and never for the same reasons or with the same fix.. sometimes it likes to just grab the wrong tools or not turn the coolant on.. it crashes in spectacular fashion on a semi regular basis.. sometimes you need 2 people to execute a pallet change: one to single block thru the process at the controller, and another on the other side of the machine manually pushing the button on the solenoid at the right moment to lift the table...

sometimes, it runs all week without an issue.. god, i hate that thing..

Criminy, the upper control is identical to the 2013 Stars I run everyday.

bigdaddylee82 wrote: I don't see a tape reel or air/vac lines, so it can't be that old.

I trained how to program basic moves on an "NC" milling machine back in 1980 in high school - it was to be the future.

In reply to Datsun310Guy:

Grandpa ran a screw machine shop out of his barn for ~40 years. Primary money makers were a pair of New Brittan screw machines, one was WWII era, as in purchased from the Navy post war. The other wasn't much newer. Those were all gear, shim, a LOT of experience, and a little magic in set up. He also had a giant NC Bridgeport with tool changer and tape reel, had tape puncher to "program" it too. That thing was a nightmare and never worked right, he bought it used of course, the miles of air lines proved too daunting of a task to successfully diagnose and repair.

His screw machines:

Sampling of parts he made:

I learned so much from him. Sadly we lost him suddenly in '09. I couldn't tell you the number of times since then I've been thinking something through, or stumped on something I was building/tinkering with, and had that momentary instinct of wanting to asking Grandpa, before coming back to sobering reality. They sure don't make them like him anymore.

Got stuck running this POS again tonight.. found a serial number plate that says "remanufactured in 2003".. which means that it was old enough to be worn out 13 years ago..