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CNC dropping partnership with Volumill?


neurosis
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Thanks for clearing that up Bob. That makes me feel much better. <grin>

 

I just wish they had given a little more consideration to how this would affect the folks that are paying maintenance. I have been on maintenance for several years and I feel I deserve better.

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Bob, while I can understand (some) of your rants, You too can choose not to upgrade, even as you are a maintenance customer.

If you feel that the combination of X5 and Volumill is better than what CNC evolves to, then by all means stay at X5.

You get the benefit of having Volumill and X5, and yet maintain the ability to upgrade in the future when/if CNC includes something better than Volumill.

 

But therein lies the conundrum.

When or if CNC comes up with the newest, bestest, kicka$$ material removal scheme, who will you then be mad at?

Volumill, for not keeping up because they are much smaller and do not have the resources as CNC?

CNC, for making the newest, bestest, kicka$$ material removal scheme and therefore obsoleting their "partnership"?

Yourself, for getting panties mashed over spending good money on a third party product you really didn't need anyway?

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When or if CNC comes up with the newest, bestest, kicka$$ material removal scheme, who will you then be mad at?

 

I wont be mad. I will be very happy because my job will be easier and that is why I pay maintenance. What bothers me is there is very little notice on this (45 days) and there isn't yet a solution from Mastercam. I am glad that CNC is making progress and the more programming options there are the better. It would be nice to keep the Volumill functionality at least until Mastercam has an answer and it is no longer needed. It sucks that it is essentially 'turned off' with the next MU of Mastercam.

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It would be nice to keep the Volumill functionality at least until Mastercam has an answer and it is no longer needed.

 

Did your Volumill suddenly stop working??

 

As of right now, nobody as lost anything

You'e running X5 and your Volumill works just fine.

 

It sucks that it is essentially 'turned off' with the next MU of Mastercam.

 

 

Do we know that for sure??

 

Does in run in current MU1 betas?? I don't know, but I'll bet it does..

and I'll bet it runs in the public release of MU1 as well

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Here is the email from Celeritive:

 

We regret to inform you that CNC Software has decided to terminate our partnership with them. Effective May 1, 2011, we will no longer able to run our copies of Mastercam or continue our ongoing development of VoluMill for Mastercam. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this is sure to cause. However, our focus remains on you and our continuing commitment to support VoluMill. So, what does this mean for you? Until April 30, it will be business as usual.

 

After April 30th:

 

1. You can continue to use VoluMill in Mastercam for as long as you are running any version of X2, X3, X4, the current version of X5, or any updated version of X5 that is released prior to May 1.

 

2. If you choose to install any upcoming maintenance updates or service packs for X5 beyond that, VoluMill will not run.

 

3. We can continue to provide customer support at the same level that we can now, with the following exception:

 

o If you need to send us a file for review, it will need to be a SolidWorks file, or in a neutral-file format, such as STEP.

We know that VoluMill is a powerful tool that has become integral to your manufacturing operations. We will follow up this communication with information concerning your options for continuing forward with VoluMill, and gaining even more benefit from your VoluMill purchase. In the meantime, please contact us with any questions.

 

Sincerely,

 

Your friends at Celeritive Technologies, Inc.

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Bob, while I can understand (some) of your rants, You too can choose not to upgrade, even as you are a maintenance customer.

If you feel that the combination of X5 and Volumill is better than what CNC evolves to, then by all means stay at X5.

You get the benefit of having Volumill and X5, and yet maintain the ability to upgrade in the future when/if CNC includes something better than Volumill.

 

But therein lies the conundrum.

When or if CNC comes up with the newest, bestest, kicka$$ material removal scheme, who will you then be mad at?

Volumill, for not keeping up because they are much smaller and do not have the resources as CNC?

CNC, for making the newest, bestest, kicka$$ material removal scheme and therefore obsoleting their "partnership"?

Yourself, for getting panties mashed over spending good money on a third party product you really didn't need anyway?

 

 

I cant speak for Bob zoober, but when we invested in Volumill, The only solutions that mastercam had that even came close was 2d core, and SHS core. Neither of those two tool paths work worth a xxxx compared to Volumill at the time or even now.

 

This is not about whether or not Mastercam X5 + Volumill is better. Suggesting that someone drop maintenance just for the sake of continuing to use this plugin seems rather ridiculous. Volumill has functionality that Mastercam does not! The explanation of why they are dropping Volumill does not make any sense at me at this point and to lose this investment is aggravating.

 

I guess when you are not the one that just flushed that money down the toilet it is easy to make suggestions and statements like that. And when WE invested in Volumill we needed it to make up for Mastercams lack of high speed tool paths.

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It is always a tough call relying on a third party addon, because there is always a risk of the chain being broken somewhere along the line, wether it is the CAM vendor, or the addon vendor, or both, that terminate the association.

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It is always a tough call relying on a third party addon, because there is always a risk of the chain being broken somewhere along the line, wether it is the CAM vendor, or the addon vendor, or both, that terminate the association.

 

 

That's one on the main reasons I would never, ever go with MC for Solidworks - no chance!

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Suggesting that someone drop maintenance just for the sake of continuing to use this plugin seems rather ridiculous.

You may want to read my post. I said just the opposite. Maintain maintenance, and keep the ability to update. Just don't do it untill YOU are ready.

No, I didn't flush that money. I don't see the need.

Now, before you tell me how much Mastercam doesn't do without Volumill, let me tell youi that we are doing some pretty trick 3D stuff that others can't or won't do without it. Some on here have seen the work we do. In Mastercam. Post and play. No plugins required. 3,4, and 5axis.

 

Make the software you are using dance! Volumill is NOT necessary. The correct process is. That includes tooling, fixturing and methodology. Just adding software alone is not enough.

We sometimes peel mill with the just contour path. 60-100IPM in 15-5 stainless, with tools lasting longer than the reps can believe. Over 4 hrs in the material in some instances. No cycle alone can do that.

As Jimmy said:

The biggest gains I see in material removal have more to do with the programmer's knowledge of tooling (or in my case its knowing the tool reps number :) )

 

By the way, I would think that Volumill folks knew about this before now. I don't see anyone putting the onus on Celeritive to make what you bought from them work. With Mastercam or not.

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Make the software you are using dance! Volumill is NOT necessary. The correct process is. That includes tooling, fixturing and methodology. Just adding software alone is not enough.

We sometimes peel mill with the just contour path. 60-100IPM in 15-5 stainless, with tools lasting longer than the reps can believe. Over 4 hrs in the material in some instances. No cycle alone can do that.

As Jimmy said:

 

 

 

I'll tell you what. Lets go back to Mastercam X2 Mr2 and both program just a simple 2d parts using a high speed strategy. We will time how long it takes to get from geometry to tool path to machining a part. I'll program the same part using volumill and lets make some comparisons. Volumill requires no construction geometry and generates very efficient tool path. Stock Mastercam, especially back in the X2 era, was not so efficient.

 

We made that investment to make money. Time is money. Volumill cut our programming time down even on simple parts by in some cases 80%. That is an investment that was very beneficial to us. And believe me. The machine danced at very high speeds and programming time was minimal.

 

Could we machine the same parts prior to purchasing volumill. Of course we could . In fact a good portion of the work was programmed prior to investing in volumill. Did we need it. No. D

 

You could hand write all of your 2d programs rather than purchase mastercam. Do you need mastercam. NO. Did the investment make sense. Well of course it did.

 

By the way, I would think that Volumill folks knew about this before now. I don't see anyone putting the onus on Celeritive to make what you bought from them work. With Mastercam or not.

 

Celeritive did NOT know aything about this. They were just as surprised as we were. I was on the phone with Glenn Coleman today and got the skinny on what happened and they had no idea that this was coming.

 

You can make accusations if you like about Celeratives ethics but from my stand point, they have been more than a pleasure to work with and I would recommend that company to anyone. They went out of their way to solve any issues that we had and did it in a very professional manner. They have top notch support!

 

And sorry Zoob, I misunderstood what you said in your earlier post. Its been a long day and I have read about 20 emails and every single on of the posts in this thread so my eyes are tired.

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Guest CNC Apps Guy 1
The "ONLY" people that stand to lose here are we who purchased Volumill.

 

That's the KNOWNrisk when you depend on 3rd Party Development.

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Guest CNC Apps Guy 1

David, you have essentially made all of your maintenance paying customers' investment in Volumill worthless. Did you consider that before making the decision to end the partnership with Volumill?

CNC's responsibility is to Mastercam, NOT 3rd Party Developers from where I stand.

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I may be wrong but this may be a work around. Volumill universal allows you to post out Mastercam NCI. You can then import that NCI into your mastercam file and post it from there. As far as I know the actual Mastercam NCI hasn't changed alot for basic 3 axis mill in years. My guess is this would work to use volumill in X6.

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I am not saying that volumill is not doing some things better or more efficiently. There are times I wish I had Catia or Solidworks to model some of these valve bodies I fight in Mastercam.

But that is not in the plan. So I make do.

CNC has made great strides since X2, and I think that needs to be remembered when the rumors about splitting out products and such goes. I think Dave made it plain they are still doing even more.

Next release could make this a moot point. Or not. Time will tell.

 

You can make accusations if you like about Celeratives ethics but from my stand point,...

I haven't made any judgments about Celerative or their ethics. Why would I?

I was merely pointing out that "I would think" they would know about it. Looks like I thought wrong. But we all know there are two sides, and so far I haven't heard them, so it is all speculation on my part as to what went down between the two businesses.

But by the same token, If I had a third party product that no longer worked in the mother product, I would have to go to the one that no longer works to see if there is another avenue, IE standalone.

I see CNC getting beat up over this, and I think that there is more to it than CNC just willy nilly deciding to drop them. .

Until there is a joint statement, No-one will know for sure, as both sides will say what benefits them. It's just the way it works.

 

I think we all need to remember the days when there were no third party add-ons, chooks, etc for any cam systems. You want more? get another, perhaps redundant system that does that one extra thing.

We have come along way since then, but as long as there are third party products involved, the potential for future non compatibility will exist.

The gamble may or may not work. In this case, it appears it didn't.

 

And sorry Zoob,....

No need, man. :old forum cheers:

I can understand the grief. I am just trying to see two sides here. And neither one seems cut and dried.

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CNC's responsibility is to Mastercam, NOT 3rd Party Developers from where I stand.

 

The responsibility of a producer of any product is to keep customers happy. Making critical decisions without a good plan to minimize the effects on the customers is just bad business. Tell me you can't see that.... :rolleyes:

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I see CNC getting beat up over this, and I think that there is more to it than CNC just willy nilly deciding to drop them. .

Until there is a joint statement, No-one will know for sure, as both sides will say what benefits them. It's just the way it works.

 

 

 

I couldnt agree more with what you are saying. The finger pointing at CNC is mostly due to this being solely their decision. I would imagine that there is more to the story than either side is telling but who knows. Nobody is offering any more information then they have to. So far I have a behind the scenes explanation on CNC's side that Celeritive disputes vigorously, Daves explanation which in all honesty, do they really owe one?, but his explanation seems like it is avoiding the meat and potatoes of the situation.

 

Two things would make this a moot issue. A little more warning, maybe a full release cycle of Mastercam ( this was going to be an instant dismissal for celerative but celerative was able to talk CNC in to an extension of 60 days after trying for 90 ), and if they would have waited until they at least had a comparable product to replace our investment.

 

My frustration is more the way that things went down. The lack of warning, explanation, etc, than the fact that it happened at all.

 

 

And James,

 

We dont DEPEND on 3rd party development. We invested in it because it made sense. It accomplished things that mastercam was not capable of at the time and it made a very inefficient system efficient for us.

 

And I would hope that CNC's responsibility would be customer satisfaction. It appears that their main concern is CNC.

 

 

I may be wrong but this may be a work around. Volumill universal allows you to post out Mastercam NCI. You can then import that NCI into your mastercam file and post it from there. As far as I know the actual Mastercam NCI hasn't changed alot for basic 3 axis mill in years. My guess is this would work to use volumill in X6.

 

I discussed some of the solutions with Glenn on the phone today and that was one of them. None of the solutions are going to be convenient so maybe they will not be practical. If X6 has all of the benefits talked about in this thread then 6 months or a year from now this conversation will be long forgotten.

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I truly wish everyone the best in this.

Unfortunately, when businesses disagree, lawyers are generally in the wings. Perhaps that is the reason for the lack of response.... I wish it wasn't the case, but owning a business and having a retainer almost always go hand in hand.

And that is never best for the customer.

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