Custom Setup Sheets vs. Mastercam ones

[sharles]

Back in 2019 when we massively upgraded how we use Mastercam's stand-alone tool library and machine simulation software, we briefly tried to customize the setup sheets Mastercam generates. But we were never happy with them because they either gave way too much information....or not enough of what we wanted... and so we stuck with the custom Excel sheet we use to give our operators toolpath information, a Powerpoint printout we include in our packets for pictures and setup instructions, and then some of the guys on this forum suggested we use Varco Reports for our tool build sheets.

Now, I'm pretty happy with Varco Reports (I included a screen shot because I always like to give Jim's stuff a plug whenever I can!) because the software loads right into Mastercam, and is highly customizable and so everything it generates is right from within Mastercam thus, no mistakes. But as you would figure, by doing our own Excel and Powerpoint sheets, there's plenty of room for error and typos since we all try to reuse them to minimize the amount typing we have to do which leads to carryover mistakes from previous jobs as well as simple typing mistakes and such.

I'm curious if the guys using Mastercam generated toolpath/setup sheets think we could get anything even close to either the Excel or Powerpoint screen shots I uploaded. It would be nice to eliminate the mistakes and typos. Maybe we just didn't spend enough time trying to customize what Mastercam provides. Maybe it's something that would be worth paying our reseller or someone else to help us customize what Mastercam can do to approximate what we do AND eliminate all the mistakes. Just wondering, thanks!

[sharles]

hmmmm....since no one responded, not sure what to make of that. I had hoped to generate a discussion on the topic if nothing else. Does this mean I have 'great' setup sheets and nothing Mastercam can generate compares??? I was kind of hoping to see screen shots of what the rest of you are using. Maybe since we are a pattern shop,  where every piece is unique and every operator is essentially a setup guy, our needs are just too different from the majority of Mastercam users. Terry (my co-worker) and I have often wondered how many other pattern shops use Mastercam since it seems so many of you are in machine shop settings....

[nperry]

The first sheet and third sheet you show in your post....no doubt in my mind that can done with ActiveReports. It's a lot to go through though, and I think someone who is well-versed in AR would be able to do it within maybe a week without interruption. The second sheet I'm not sure if there's a good way to go about doing that. 

[Newbeeee™]

+1 to AR being capable of producing what you see for sht 1 + 3.

I'm sure the image can be generated - the issue is your annotation. That (correct me if I'm wrong) will always need to go into an editing tool to "add your words".

Serious Q as I'm only familiar upto 2020....does the latest version save in native MSword format yet?

[SuperHoneyBadger]

We are a job shop with an unforeseeable mix of low and high volume, sometimes one offs. The philosophy is a simple, top/side drawing showing XYZ zeros and clamps etc, and the plain text setup sheet below.

The "Setup Instructions" portion is a file that I copy and mod for each job, and is in the mastercam file as a manual entry pointing to a text file. We have a wild post from before my time, and it works for 80% of what we post. Misc variables handle what machine it will post for, high speed or not, etc.

I have seen a lot of complex setup sheets posed around here, we have a system that gives you a tool type, tool diameter and total Z engagement below Z0. It all gets posted after the M30 as you see it below. The operator takes that info and builds his tools, I make some notes in the tool name if we need extra clearance or grindback: 1/4 CARB EM 4FL - CLR 2.0. Usually just knowing how deep a tool will go is enough to pick an endmill.

The most I have handed someone is three sheets of paper for 1 OP. Usually it's two, and one is a nice drawing I made.

I have also been tinkering with the IKE post and it's auto setup sheet, but I can't get all the functionality of the sheet below. Yet... I will.

 

RECORD CYCLE TIME HRS: _______ MINS: _______ NO. OF PARTS: ____
 
 MATERIAL: 3/16  - NITRO-V STEEL PLATE
 
 BLANK SIZE:  WATERJET BLANK          MILL TO: OP1 COMPLETE
 
 PARTS PER BLANK: 1
 
 *****************************************************************
 SETUP INSTRUCTIONS:
 *****************************************************************
 
 HORZ ONLY 
 
 HOLD ON FIXTURE 4731-0
 ØTOOLING BALL IN .250 HOLE FOR MEASUREMENT
 
 BOLT TO FIXURE USING CLAMP (4731-5): 2X 4-40, 2X 1/4-20
 
 G54 - B0
 
 X=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Y=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Z=0 AT TOP OF TOOLING BALL
 
 G55 - B63
 
 X=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED)
 Y=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Z=0 AT TOP OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED)
 
 G57 - B297
 
 X=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED)
 Y=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Z=0 AT TOP OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED) 
 
 
 SEE SETUP SHEET
 *****************************************************************
 MAX SPINDLE SPEED = S15000
 
 OVERALL MAX - Z2. / OVERALL MIN - Z-.8621
 
N10    G54 B0.      T5  H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.5000 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.4509 ) 1/2 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N20    G54 B0.      T12 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.2500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.4509 ) 1/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N30    G55 B63.     T7  H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.8621 ) 3/4 BULLNOSE 4FL - RUFF
N40    G57 B297.    T7  H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.8611 ) 3/4 BULLNOSE 4FL - RUFF
N50    G55 B63.     T17 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.857 ) 3/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N60    G57 B297.    T17 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.856 ) 3/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N70    G54 B0.      T12 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.2500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.4509 ) 1/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
 
      ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
!!!!    TOOL FEED INFO    !!!!
t5  5   FEED- 6  PLUNGE-  50   RETR  = 400  RPM  - 1500   // EXT LGT =  4.  FL/LGT = 1.
t7  7   FEED- 4  PLUNGE-  50   RETR  = 400  RPM  - 1000   // EXT LGT =  2.  FL/LGT = 1.2
t12 12  FEED- 10  PLUNGE - 50  RETR = 400  RPM - 3000   // EXT LGT =  4.  FL/LGT = 1.
t17 17  FEED- 10  PLUNGE - 50  RETR = 400  RPM - 1000   // EXT LGT =  4.  FL/LGT = 2.

 

 

[sharles]

3 minutes ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

We are a job shop with an unforeseeable mix of low and high volume, sometimes one offs. The philosophy is a simple, top/side drawing showing XYZ zeros and clamps etc, and the plain text setup sheet below.

The "Setup Instructions" portion is a file that I copy and mod for each job, and is in the mastercam file as a manual entry pointing to a text file. We have a wild post from before my time, and it works for 80% of what we post. Misc variables handle what machine it will post for, high speed or not, etc.

I have seen a lot of complex setup sheets posed around here, we have a system that gives you a tool type, tool diameter and total Z engagement below Z0. It all gets posted after the M30 as you see it below. The operator takes that info and builds his tools, I make some notes in the tool name if we need extra clearance or grindback: 1/4 CARB EM 4FL - CLR 2.0. Usually just knowing how deep a tool will go is enough to pick an endmill.

The most I have handed someone is three sheets of paper for 1 OP. Usually it's two, and one is a nice drawing I made.

I have also been tinkering with the IKE post and it's auto setup sheet, but I can't get all the functionality of the sheet below. Yet... I will.

 

RECORD CYCLE TIME HRS: _______ MINS: _______ NO. OF PARTS: ____
 
 MATERIAL: 3/16  - NITRO-V STEEL PLATE
 
 BLANK SIZE:  WATERJET BLANK          MILL TO: OP1 COMPLETE
 
 PARTS PER BLANK: 1
 
 *****************************************************************
 SETUP INSTRUCTIONS:
 *****************************************************************
 
 HORZ ONLY 
 
 HOLD ON FIXTURE 4731-0
 ØTOOLING BALL IN .250 HOLE FOR MEASUREMENT
 
 BOLT TO FIXURE USING CLAMP (4731-5): 2X 4-40, 2X 1/4-20
 
 G54 - B0
 
 X=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Y=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Z=0 AT TOP OF TOOLING BALL
 
 G55 - B63
 
 X=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED)
 Y=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Z=0 AT TOP OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED)
 
 G57 - B297
 
 X=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED)
 Y=0 AT C/L OF TOOLING BALL
 Z=0 AT TOP OF TOOLING BALL (AS PRESENTED) 
 
 
 SEE SETUP SHEET
 *****************************************************************
 MAX SPINDLE SPEED = S15000
 
 OVERALL MAX - Z2. / OVERALL MIN - Z-.8621
 
N10    G54 B0.      T5  H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.5000 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.4509 ) 1/2 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N20    G54 B0.      T12 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.2500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.4509 ) 1/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N30    G55 B63.     T7  H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.8621 ) 3/4 BULLNOSE 4FL - RUFF
N40    G57 B297.    T7  H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.8611 ) 3/4 BULLNOSE 4FL - RUFF
N50    G55 B63.     T17 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.857 ) 3/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N60    G57 B297.    T17 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.7500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.856 ) 3/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
N70    G54 B0.      T12 H/D#107/8 // TD( 0.2500 ) MIN_Z= ( Z-.4509 ) 1/4 CARB EM 4FL - FIN
 
      ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
!!!!    TOOL FEED INFO    !!!!
t5  5   FEED- 6  PLUNGE-  50   RETR  = 400  RPM  - 1500   // EXT LGT =  4.  FL/LGT = 1.
t7  7   FEED- 4  PLUNGE-  50   RETR  = 400  RPM  - 1000   // EXT LGT =  2.  FL/LGT = 1.2
t12 12  FEED- 10  PLUNGE - 50  RETR = 400  RPM - 3000   // EXT LGT =  4.  FL/LGT = 1.
t17 17  FEED- 10  PLUNGE - 50  RETR = 400  RPM - 1000   // EXT LGT =  4.  FL/LGT = 2.

 

Yeah depending on the complexity, I've had up to 6-7 toolpath sheets, same number of pictures (1 or more per operation setup) and the guys like printouts of the drilling programs which means 30 or more pages....

[SuperHoneyBadger]

1 minute ago, sharles said:

30 or more pages

My guy.

We are dealing with vastly less complex components over here in the bush leagues. That's an impressive workload to manage and make sheets for. Lots of folks here seem to favour X+ for their setups, and everyone and their Mother's best friend hates Active Reports. I hope you get some thought provoking answers from the vets!

[sharles]

Does anyone know who might be available for hire for me to contact about trying to replicate the toolpath sheets? If he/she is reasonable, it would probably be easier than us trying to figure it out from scratch.

6 minutes ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

My guy.

We are dealing with vastly less complex components over here in the bush leagues. That's an impressive workload to manage and make sheets for. Lots of folks here seem to favour X+ for their setups, and everyone and their Mother's best friend hates Active Reports. I hope you get some thought provoking answers from the vets!

Not everything is that long by any means...not even most...but that's also not unusual....

[neurosis]

40 minutes ago, Newbeeee™ said:

Serious Q as I'm only familiar upto 2020....does the latest version save in native MSword format yet?

Doesn't look like it

 

[cruzila]

I started with MC2019 I took the boxed setup sheet, mill2 I think and modified it to fit our needs. We are up to rev6 now. We are a small shop, mostly short run and one offs. So far, MC has had the best setup sheet I've worked with. With operators now being setup guys too, (Another discussion entirely) more and more detail is needed.

What you have looks like was generated from Active reports in part. Looks detailed. Failing to have attention to detail in this industry is well, failure. There are as many ways to go about things as there are machinists. Getting the policy set and following it I think would be at least as important as the details.

[So not a Guru]

44 minutes ago, neurosis said:

Doesn't look like it

 

That's excel not word

[So not a Guru]

1 hour ago, sharles said:

Does anyone know who might be available for hire for me to contact about trying to replicate the toolpath sheets? If he/she is reasonable, it would probably be easier than us trying to figure it out from scratch.

@Bill Craven is the guy that I learned a whole lot from regarding Active Reports. I don't know if he does any contract work like this at all, but he might be able to point you in the right direction.

How are you generating that image now?

 We don't need anything other than the view we have in the MC window (the part, fixture & WCS) when we generate our sheets, so I haven't investigated other images or screenshots in our sheets. But, Active Reports is a pretty powerful tool, there is probably a way to integrate your images into the sheet, as others have already stated the other sheets wouldn't be too much trouble.

[neurosis]

33 minutes ago, So not a Guru said:

That's excel not word

Which is why I said "it doesn't look like it".   

It's just a coincidence that was where my mouse was hovering when I hit print screen.

[So not a Guru]

1 minute ago, neurosis said:

Which is why I said "it doesn't look like it".   

It's just a coincidence that was where my mouse was hovering when I hit print screen.

I'm getting senile. I read that as "Does this look like it."

[sharles]

48 minutes ago, So not a Guru said:

@Bill Craven is the guy that I learned a whole lot from regarding Active Reports. I don't know if he does any contract work like this at all, but he might be able to point you in the right direction.

How are you generating that image now?

 We don't need anything other than the view we have in the MC window (the part, fixture & WCS) when we generate our sheets, so I haven't investigated other images or screenshots in our sheets. But, Active Reports is a pretty powerful tool, there is probably a way to integrate your images into the sheet, as others have already stated the other sheets wouldn't be too much trouble.

Thanks! I sent him a message and will see what he says....

49 minutes ago, So not a Guru said:

@Bill Craven is the guy that I learned a whole lot from regarding Active Reports. I don't know if he does any contract work like this at all, but he might be able to point you in the right direction.

How are you generating that image now?

 We don't need anything other than the view we have in the MC window (the part, fixture & WCS) when we generate our sheets, so I haven't investigated other images or screenshots in our sheets. But, Active Reports is a pretty powerful tool, there is probably a way to integrate your images into the sheet, as others have already stated the other sheets wouldn't be too much trouble.

The images we grab from Mastercam's print button, but we "print" it to OneNote and then paste it into PowerPoint...

[Newbeeee™]

2 hours ago, neurosis said:

Doesn't look like it

 

That was on the enhancement request radar back in the X7 days....It's crazy because the main AR package has the option - it's just CNC don't pay to license it.

RTF, TXT, HTML, yada yada don't import 100% - the best I had was save as pdf and load/edit/save in Nitro.

It was maddening to me because all the info is within the mcam file - it's all there - so "in this day and age"  "we should be able to get the one click output

But apparently I'm the only one that ever moaned LoLz....but then I valued my time and never liked wasting it.

[So not a Guru]

1 hour ago, sharles said:

The images we grab from Mastercam's print button, but we "print" it to OneNote and then paste it into PowerPoint...

If that's the case Active Reports can capture that image for you. As I said earlier, we don't have any need for it, so I didn't spend any time refining our capture report, I am sure it can be done though.

If that is view is what's on the screen when we create our report, it would be the 1st page of our setup sheet.

27 minutes ago, Newbeeee™ said:

That was on the enhancement request radar back in the X7 days....It's crazy because the main AR package has the option - it's just CNC don't pay to license it.

RTF, TXT, HTML, yada yada don't import 100% - the best I had was save as pdf and load/edit/save in Nitro.

It was maddening to me because all the info is within the mcam file - it's all there - so "in this day and age"  "we should be able to get the one click output

But apparently I'm the only one that ever moaned LoLz....but then I valued my time and never liked wasting it.

If you have Acrobat Pro, you can export the pdf as a Word document.

[Newbeeee™]

20 minutes ago, So not a Guru said:

 

If you have Acrobat Pro, you can export the pdf as a Word document.

In the halcyon days  the X7/X9 era, there was issues with using this - I tried it and there was something that was a problem - "boxes" import not aligning with text perhaps (or that may have been the HTML)?

Anyway, Nitro was the only thing I could get to handle it faultlessly. Although a bit of a PITA at editing and adding/aligning text. But it worked well.

Whether Acrobat handles it perfect now though....?

[Jake L]

On 6/27/2023 at 8:02 AM, sharles said:

we stuck with the custom Excel sheet we use to give our operators toolpath information

We do a lot of aerospace and defense industry parts. Sometimes the customer needs 1 part and sometimes they need 1,000. We have a pretty good mix of different quantities.

We have a tool sheet that looks very similar to your first image which has all the tooling information on it. Each custom tool is an additional sheet to show what the tool is. 1-2 sheets for setup (x / y / z zeros) which are screenshots or "print to pdf's" of solids and notes drawn inside Mastercam. Add a handful of inspection sheets (print to pdf's again) and a couple screenshots of the part after it has run through verify, and that's what our guys get to run each OP.

As far as I know we've never looked into automating our tool sheet generation, but it isn't a bad idea. I'm sure it would save a lot of us a lot of time. 

[Bill Craven]

I am in the middle of a large critical project and don't have much time now, but will help if I can.

A couple of things about Active reports:

One of the biggest problems (in my opinion) is the lack of fields available to store information in.  I have to get very creative on finding places to store information and part numbers.

Not all information is available for extraction from the Mastercam file to Active Reports.  The Mastercam file is realy a database of information about the tools, about the operations and all of the settings...  Those features are extracted by the RPX parser for a report, but not all of the fields are availble for extraction.  Whenever CNC adds new features to Mastercam, it may take a couple of generations/Versions of Mastercam before the information is available for extraction for Active Reports.

Sometimes when CNC changes the internal structure of the Mastercam file, they "break" my workarounds and my sheets no longer generate correctly.

I have tried using Acrobat Pro to convert a saved PDF setup to Word and it mostly looks okay, but when you start editing the doc, it goes wonky pretty quick.

I typically use Snagit for capturing screen images.  It makes them very easy to paste into a Doc or Spreadsheet.

I have created a few Active reports that don't have a lot of borders or other features and use that as a Word "transfer" doc.  After saving as a PDF, I can grab a group of text items and copy them and then paste them directly into Word or Powerpoint.  

All of the text highlighted in blue from this PDF can be copied and pasted directly into Word or PowerPoint.  

[AHarrison1]

A place I used to work at actually did away with paper set up sheets and used Ipads for all shop floor communications.

This was done with software called Mr.Narrative https://www.invawarecorp.com/mrnarrative.

The concept was every part was called a book

The Chapters within the 'book' was broken up into departments.

There would be a chapter for engineering, a chapter for quality, chapter for machine shop setup etc.

Within each chapter would be pages, for e.g

In Quality chapter would be a page for quality alerts, a page with links to machine specs and a page for inspection data.

All updates were live so as soon as an entry was made to say Quality then that change would  become an alert for that part.

For tool setups, each page would be a different tool with pictures that could be taken and added with the Ipad.

[Newbeeee™]

IMHO, you're too kind Bill!
I remember the excitement and fanfare of the AR release, back in X4.
2009.
And here we are, 14 years later...10bucks says Gunthers X+ still knocks AR out the park.
As a (former) purchaser of 2x full seats and many years of paying maintenance, I invested a small fortune into mcam.
So my disappointed opinion, is AR was a badly conceived and implemented, college project.

[TFarrell9]

I modified the mill2 template (attached) and think it suffices. I modified the lathe template the best I could as well, but I wish it were more similar to the mill format.

 

setup sheet example.pdf

[Bill Craven]

Newbeeee,

I think that one of the things that really hurts Active reports is how difficult it is to learn to modify the templates to get the output that you want.  We are supposed to be programming parts.  ("Why isn't that spindle running?")

Sometimes, I would spend as much time documenting a project as programming.  The information was there, we just had to get it out of the Mastercam file.

I remember when Dave Thompson was with IHS, he was my mentor for Post Processor generated setup sheets.  Way before AR.

I spent my own time learning AR.  I primarliy do turnkey projects now and wanted to have some polished looking results that I could generate with one click of the mouse.  I have gotten close to what I want, but 2023 broke it for me.  

Jim Varco's product is very good and it is pretty easy to make many modifications.

Gunther's X+ is excellent and I use it for quick double checks of settings.  (Did I remember to turn the coolant on for all operations?)  15 seconds later, I have my answer.  I am sure I could do more with it, but I have invested time and energy in AR.

There have been whispered rumors swirling around in the mist for years that CNC was going to implement a new Setup sheet report writer.  

 

[Jobnt]

7 minutes ago, Bill Craven said:

There have been whispered rumors swirling around in the mist for years that CNC was going to implement a new Setup sheet report writer.  

I hope so. The current method is, as my signature states, the Joe Biden of computer Apps.