Fanuc charging for user manual? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Kalin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 01:15:45 am
content: Maybe I am just getting old and cranky but it blows my mind that when I called Fanuc and gave them the serial number for a less than 4 year old robot and controller (r30i controller with m410ih robot) they said I need to set up a sales account with them and purchase the user manual for $235 usd and it takes 2 weeks for them to send out the paper copy. They will not make it electronically available because in their words "the manual is a product we sell and shouldn't be available to everyone". Even the industrial PLC manufacturers that I have used in the past who are very protective of their IP and have stringent licensing, make their documentation available and the user manual is easy to download. Is there some special sauce in the user's manual for robot controllers? Am I crazy and this is something that I should just get used to?Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 01:30:31 am
content: Try asking faking being from the EU where keeping technical documentation is required by law, although not sure about user manuals.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 02:05:44 am
content: Have you tried searching online?

author: Kalin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 02:15:49 am
content: Yes I have searched online to no avail. And they track where the machines are sold to and require you to set up an account with them for support so no way to fake where I am located.Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 02:35:41 am
content: thats like charging people for entering a store because heat escapes when you open the door

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 05:28:17 am
content: That is indeed an asshole move from them.But its probably not only them, i remember my Uni getting a old robot arm (I think it was ABB) that was thrown out of a factory. Its one of these huge ones that assemble car bodies. In the usual "just get it out of here" disassembly from the factory floor they have removed the cables with a chainsaw and just tossed the thing out. So they really needed the manual and because this thing was originally owned by Renault the manuals that came with it are all in french. They ended up having to translate the relevant parts of it.But this might be the case for most massive industrial machines. Things like big CNCs or presses and such often come with a huge stack of binder folders that hold all the documentation and i would guess you can't just download a PDF of that from the website.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 05:31:30 am
content: then they are idiots storing things on paper instead of making a PDF. it occupies factory spacea work bench can be put in place of a filing cabinet array

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 06:12:09 am
content: Wow, that's really dicky of them.I really hate this kind of corporate approach, where they are supposed to show the (potential) customer who's the boss.

author: dzseki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 06:14:23 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on September 05, 2019, 05:31:30 amI think they have the source format in eectronic form, they are just not letting out in that way, instead they print it out. Imagine if someone would have a pdf, the internet would be all over with it. If you have 250 pages of paper documentation, less likely (though not impossible).

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 06:15:00 am
content: Usually this kind of companies make money (big portion of it) from periodic contract maintenance, compared to say than selling the product it self.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 06:28:44 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on September 05, 2019, 05:31:30 amThe same company has 3 rooms full of technical drawings on paper form from back when these things ware done on paper by hand.But when it comes to the machines the space the documentation takes up is next to nothing (Even if its often >10 binders) compared to the space the machine takes up on the factory floor, some of the bigger ones are larger than a typical house in dimension and most of the CNCs are so large you can take a walk trough the working area.That being said i do have some test equipment documentation at home in the form of binder folders that i was not able to find anywhere online. But i don't have a fast efficient scanning setup that could scan all of this in without taking forever(Especially for the fold out drawings that are bigger than A4). So i keep it in dead tree form on a shelf

author: Kalin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 12:04:45 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on September 05, 2019, 06:15:00 amI work as a maintenance and new installation contractor. If I relied on holding back documentation for what I do to ensure I got maintenance contracts I would get no referrals from existing customers. That is just lazy. Plus why should you contract people to fly thousands of kilometers to service something because they don't make the documentation available. If anything that makes me not want to give them more money or use them for any future projectsSent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 12:19:48 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on September 05, 2019, 06:28:44 amCameras are surprisingly good these days, even the ones built in to smartphones.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 12:31:06 pm
content: some people like to read manuals before buying equipment, its kind of like an advertisement.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 04:38:28 pm
content: Quote from: daqq on September 05, 2019, 06:12:09 amI think it puts a damper on re-sales -- if you own their product and want to sell it on the secondary market, your potential buyer will want documentation for installation and operation. If you can't provide that, basically you can't sell the kit. Your buyer is then forced to look at purchasing new. Clever, huh? But many people will look at down-the-road resale prior to making a purchase, even if the equipment will be fully depreciated. Lack of documentation hurts resale value.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 04:41:48 pm
content: I hate that crap. The manual should be considered part of the product and should be free. You already paid for the product, the manual should be free. If you lose it, an electronic copy should be made freely available online, not like it costs them anything to do that.In fact I sometimes like to look at the user manual of a product before I even buy it as it will give me an idea of features that may not be listed on the website.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 06:48:50 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on September 05, 2019, 12:31:06 pmIt's more than just an advertisement. It let's you, the buyer, know what the real capabilities of the item are. It's not unusual to be told that model so and so will go to XXX frequency but then when you read the manual you find out that yes, it will go to XXX but only at a greatly reduced sensitivity.If you're smart, you require in the purchase contract that the seller provides you with service manuals (AND at the time of the sale, not later). OTOH, I've worked for several companies that did get the service information but it was delivered to the Contracts Department and they didn't know what to do with it so they filed it away where no one else had access to it!

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 10:10:12 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on September 05, 2019, 06:48:50 pmyes, for instance if you read a 34401a manual you see they provide nice formulas for determining error and getting more accuracy (way more useful then just the spec sheet). that could make or break a decision for a company to purchase a meter because they know how much expertise they need from employees and how much of a pain the equipment will be..

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 05:19:48 am
content: Quote from: amyk on September 05, 2019, 12:19:48 pmYeah taking photos is what i resorted to when i needed to "scan" a large number of pages and didn't care about quality as long as it was readable.But before i get rid of the paper version of a manual id want a proper scan of it like you see in the PDF versions of such old paper manuals online. Getting that done with a regular consumer scanner is slow as heck, and anything above A4 needs stitching together multiple scans (even more time consuming).But yeah in terms of manuals the test equipment market is not so protective of there manuals. You can often find manuals for long obsolete equipment on the manufacturers website, if not then a old test gear reseller will often have the manual on there site for free. Its the service manuals that are sometimes hard to track down as not everyone keeps a nice collection of those like HP/Agilent/Keysight does

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 10:59:39 am
content: Quote from: Berni on September 06, 2019, 05:19:48 amI KNOW this isn't practical for home use, but it reminded me of Google initially trying to scan all booksin a library. (or multiple libraries). Here's a pic of one of their prototype robots, for automaticallyscanning every page of a book. Am not sure how far they got! ?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 12:48:35 pm
content: Setup a phone number that charges by the minuteMake it so that a 5min phone call costs $235Call up the company after hours and leave a voicemail message for them to call you back on that number.Order the manual and ask questions for 5min(no, i'm not serious. But if they are going to charge for the manual you should be able to charge for your time ordering it)

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 01:03:23 pm
content: Unbind the manuals, and provided the pages are in reasonably good condition you can scan the stack of pages to PDF on most pro-grade multi-function copier/printers. A copy center can definitely do it for you. Unbinding the manuals with minimum damage can be a little tricky, but worst case you simply clamp them between two boards in a bookbinder's vice and plane off the binding. You can even have the paper manual rebound with a 'perfect' binding afterwards.@O.P: Do edit the title of this thread to give the make and model of the robot! With the popularity of EEVblog and the power of Google, that would be a 'gift that keeps on giving' to the Fanuc exec or marketing wallah that originated the policy of rip-off pricing for replacement manuals.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 05:21:11 pm
content: That is quite the monstrous contraption for scanning a book.Well the manuals i have are in a ring binder so unbinding them is not so hard. And yeah i could run that trough a professional photocopier with a document feeder and double sided scanning. I don't have a copier this fancy at work tho. Even more of a problem are the large foldout schematics as those require a large format scanner (being unfolded, creases smoothed over and fed in one by one). I used to work way back at a place that had an A0 scanner and printer (Mostly got used for mechanical drawings) by now that place has gone under.And to he honest i don't mind flipping trough a real dead tree manual and besides the test equipment that the manual belongs to takes up 10x more space by volume than the manual itself anyway. At least that's the case for my equipment.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 09:36:44 pm
content: crowdsource this in a company, 30 min at the photo copier per week

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 09:52:16 pm
content: Controller manuals:http://rab.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/~malewicz/Fanuc/Fanuc.zipObviously complete lies about absence in electronic format.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 10:25:49 pm
content: Fanuc is one of the "old guard" companies that still thinks that their $100,000 CNC controls are the only ones available in the world. You're lucky they didn't try to bill you for the PHONE CALL! They are one of the worst in the area of keeping technical info hidden. I make some devices that connect to Fanuc encoders, and basically you have to reverse engineer everything, it is all "top secret".Jon

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2019, 11:59:25 pm
content: more like republican guardI have been down right saddamized by not having manuals for high end equipment repair.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2019, 01:43:18 am
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on September 06, 2019, 10:59:39 amI think they eventually decided to use cameras too, because of the faster speed and nearly no loss of quality; I've had good results with only a 6MP camera. There are various "scan-mounts" you can find which hold one or two DSLRs and automate the process.Even Aliexpress has some book cammers, although not as cheap as you'd expect.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2019, 01:59:32 am
content: HID the card reader group is not much different, you essentially need to place a forward order with them of x thousand units committed per year before they share you more than the advertising flyer for some of there stuff. said flyer for no good reason has 0 technical details, no dimensions, no power supply range, no interfaces that are supported. They give no info on the thing and want me to sign saying "Sure I'll by 5000 of these things, with penalties if I do not"Due to this I bodged together a alternative that ended up being better than what there advertisement sheet promised, and burned me on ever using there products again.

author: duak
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2019, 08:28:21 pm
content: I agree with Jon. Fanuc is indeed the most closed of the CNC/automation companies. I suppose it's to protect themselves and their affiliates. A friend has an off brand CNC mill built in 2005 with a Fanuc control that came with really sketchy operator's and electrical/mechanical maintenance manuals. It didn't have any of the Fanuc manuals that are needed to keep something like this working. Fanuc was no help but I was able to find the info I needed by patiently searching the 'net and just futzing about with it.A saying pops to mind: "you can always get better, but you can't pay more"