Creating tools using external program

[Slartibartfast]

A little background: Our business (~5k employees) has a policy of allowing any engineer who wants to to learn CAM to do so, so that we are able to design products and equipment better. We predominantly use 3 and 5 axis mills. I'm trying to set up MCam lathe in such a way that engineers from a milling background have a minimal barrier to entry to programming the lathe (yes, I anticipate my poor ST10Y will be destroyed by the end of the year). I have experience programming the ST10Y lathe with HSM Works (including axial and radial milling drilling and tapping, bar pulling etc.) but I am still learning MCam.

I'm in the process of setting up a tool library for use on the lathe. The milling tool libraries are each set up for a different material and maximum spindle speeds, e.g. one library for aluminium, one for steel for a 12krpm spindle; one library for library, one for steel for a 30krpm spindle. Although I know I can use multiple cutting definitions for each insert on the lathe, I'd prefer not to since other engineers are likely to forget to select the appropriate material for every toolpath.

We have (at present) two static ER16 collets on the turret of the lathe for holding drills, taps and reamers (pocket 1 offset 40, and pocket 3 offset 41). I would like to generate a set of drills from Ø1mm to Ø13mm in 0.5mm increments, for each pocket, for each of 3 ISO material classes (aluminium, stainless and steel) so that the lathe tool libraries are as similar to the mill tool libraries as possible (and don't require editing by others). This involves generating 26 drill sizes x 2 pockets x 3 materials, or 156 different tools to start (not including taps, center drills, spot drills, reamers, live tool milling cutters etc.)

I'm not hugely excited to generate and validate all of these drills manually. It would be trivial to create an excel chart (or .csv file) of geometry and cutting parameters for the drills, Does anyone know of a means of getting such a file into MCam as a tool library?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[JoshC]

there used to be a way, back in x9 and prior days, but i think your ideas are great and i really hope some day the mastercam developers bring this back, or offer any option to edit a cvs or excel document for tools, it would be so incredible and useful to be able to make mass edits from excel on common tool settings, or to do some of the other things you described. 

back in x9 we could right click convert to text, change anything, import them back, i found a knowledge base article that talks about this functionality getting removed https://my.mastercam.com/knowledgebase/where-is-the-option-to-import-export-tools-using-a-text-file/

there are some mass edits to tools that can be made in the external tool manager though, for example i have turned on coolant for every single tool in a library using the external tool manager, so some things can be mass edited from there, but it wont be able to do everythign you described 

[byte]

3 hours ago, Slartibartfast said:

A little background: Our business (~5k employees) has a policy of allowing any engineer who wants to to learn CAM to do so, so that we are able to design products and equipment better. We predominantly use 3 and 5 axis mills. I'm trying to set up MCam lathe in such a way that engineers from a milling background have a minimal barrier to entry to programming the lathe (yes, I anticipate my poor ST10Y will be destroyed by the end of the year). I have experience programming the ST10Y lathe with HSM Works (including axial and radial milling drilling and tapping, bar pulling etc.) but I am still learning MCam.

I'm in the process of setting up a tool library for use on the lathe. The milling tool libraries are each set up for a different material and maximum spindle speeds, e.g. one library for aluminium, one for steel for a 12krpm spindle; one library for library, one for steel for a 30krpm spindle. Although I know I can use multiple cutting definitions for each insert on the lathe, I'd prefer not to since other engineers are likely to forget to select the appropriate material for every toolpath.

We have (at present) two static ER16 collets on the turret of the lathe for holding drills, taps and reamers (pocket 1 offset 40, and pocket 3 offset 41). I would like to generate a set of drills from Ø1mm to Ø13mm in 0.5mm increments, for each pocket, for each of 3 ISO material classes (aluminium, stainless and steel) so that the lathe tool libraries are as similar to the mill tool libraries as possible (and don't require editing by others). This involves generating 26 drill sizes x 2 pockets x 3 materials, or 156 different tools to start (not including taps, center drills, spot drills, reamers, live tool milling cutters etc.)

I'm not hugely excited to generate and validate all of these drills manually. It would be trivial to create an excel chart (or .csv file) of geometry and cutting parameters for the drills, Does anyone know of a means of getting such a file into MCam as a tool library?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Many companies buy c-hooks to import tool data or geometric data into excel from my company, if you are interested in a third party solution you can request a demo from [email protected], we can usually deliver in a few weeks with competitive pricing & we also offer maintenance and/or the option to buy source code,