Re: advice on operating Fiama F7
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Hi Joe,
You only have to access the parameters once, so typing in 273 isn¡¯t that big of a deal. ¡°ouEr¡± means you have lost signal from the magnetic banding, will definitely happen when not in range of the banding. It can also mean you have moved to fast (not likely) or you have come too close to the end of the banding.
As for metric, yes, internally it¡¯s reading metric and depending upon how you set it, it can display imperial or metric. If you want to work in metric and the distance of your tape is over 999mm, then you need to set the precision to one decimal place as the display will only show 5 digits. If you work imperial, you can run two decimal places in metric and it will read three decimals in inches and go out to 99.999¡±.
With the parameters you can set it to zero wherever you are after pushing the Enter/Reset button for 3-4 seconds, that works well if you can get your stop/fence to the blade (or something cut by the blade). If you want to work with an offset, then you change the parameter and set the amount of offset in the parameters, in metric by the way, a 4¡± offset is 101.6mm for example.
I have all this detailed in the directions on my website¡ you might have to look at a couple different sets of directions, the offset settings are detailed in the Flip Stops, and you should be able to find the ¡°zero here¡± settings on the parallel fences.
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Hi all, sounds like a few of you have a great deal of experience with these units so wanted to get tips.? I just installed an F7 on the rip fence of my Hammer K3.? that went smoothly.? using this thing however, is another matter.? I did not see a lot of sturm and drang, in searching the board history, so will just assume I have "weaknesses" (just ask my wife for her comprehensive illustrated guide on the topic).? This product is one of the most frustrating combinations of user interface design and not-helpful manual writing I think I've ever seen.? After some hours I think I have it working, but have the following questions:
- is there any way to turn off the password requirement to access the settings?? is a real drag having to laboriously march through the sequence to change anything.
- I kept running into the "ouEr" error message, which page 6 of the manual says is that the current value cannot be visualized, without any explanation of what might be the causes or how to correct it.? it was happening even when the read head was not in proximity to the mag tape.? I was able to get the unit to function by limiting the number of decimal digits to 2.? when you then switch to inches, it displays three decimal places (one thousandths resolution, which is fine, if confusing).? apparently the F7 is doing everything under the hood in mm and then just changes the display?? are there other causes for the ouEr error?
- I assume the sensible workflow with the F7 is to arrange for some sort of reference stop and associated preset in the unit, given the mag tape is not an absolute scale (meaning if you lift the fence such that read head is no longer with 1mm of the tape, it will lose track of where it is). I machined an aluminum button which fits into the scoring blade height adjustment hole in the cast iron table.? Then I just bring the fence to touch the button, run the preset function on the unit and it seems to be good to go within a few thou.? Lemme know if there are other workflows or logical stop approaches out there.??
When I decided I wanted a DRO on my fence, I was going back and forth between the wixey and the F7.? Now that I'm committed: I like how compact the F7 is, and how gracefully it integrates onto the existing scale extrusion, allowing you to flip the fence out of the way when needed.? However, the read head on wixey is always on the scale and thus knows where it is, thus not requiring referencing stop and associated workflow (I don't have one, so this is from reading what others have said).? of course the wixey has a relatively clunky extra rail you have to mount, with a magnetic coupling, which is less graceful and easier to bump.? the wixey is also 1/4 the price of the F7.? time will tell if there are differences in durability or dust resistance.? I have a wixey DRO on my planer and can say it is waaayyy easier and more intuitive to get set up and operate than the F7.? the F7 does have a bunch of functions like multiple offsets, directional control and such, but I find those functions very hard to set up and use due to the user interface issues mentioned.? this password thing is just crazy, at least from a hobbyist point of view.? I guess it makes sense from a business accident liability mitigation perspective.? thanks! -- Joe Slater michigan
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