Force tool change on first instance only

[SlaveCam]

Please give us the option for toolpath transform: Force tool change on first instance only.

Those who use transform extensively (HMC work) know what I'm talking about.

[IbanezTim]

On 7/5/2023 at 9:16 PM, SlaveCam said:

Those who use transform extensively (HMC work) know what I'm talking about.

I know exactly how you feel. Would be Nice.

I just usually leave the force tool change off, then do a 'Manual Entry' as code before hand and manually program my stop and tool change from a template I have made up, were all I do is change the tool info on. Sucks but at least it works 

[MPJ]

I agree. I transform a lot toolpaths. The easiest way I have found is to leave force tool change unchecked and bring in an exact copy of the tool. So in your tool list you will have two tools that are the same with the same tool number. Then when you post it will ask you if you want to add a tool change and It only adds the tool change once for the first instance. Usually I am using this for a tool change between the roughing and finishing operations. This was the old school way to force a tool change before the check box was an option. I would much rather they added it in the transform menu like you suggested. 

[Tim Johnson]

I program mostly HMC and am proud to say I have never used transform while running up to 64 parts per pallet.

[neurosis]

The transform in MC is worse than most other software I've used. 

While I have used it for convenience on rare occasion, I don't use it very often. I've had more issues with it than not and it's just not very robust. If it were better, I would use it more often.

It would be nice if they would add 'transform by point pattern' so you could remove transform points when needed.

[SlaveCam]

3 hours ago, neurosis said:

The transform in MC is worse than most other software I've used. 

While I have used it for convenience on rare occasion, I don't use it very often. I've had more issues with it than not and it's just not very robust. If it were better, I would use it more often.

It would be nice if they would add 'transform by point pattern' so you could remove transform points when needed.

What do you mean by "not very robust"? I've only had issues with Mirror toolpath, with which it's very easy to accidentally turn climb milling into conventional milling or left-handed threads into right-handed threads using threadmill and NCI transform, but other than that, I find it pretty robust - just lacking in features.

Manual entry on first instance would also be a nice addition and being able to add or remove instances using Point transform (as in SW) would be awesome. CNC needs to give some love to HMC programmers too, it's all just fancy 5x stuff these days.

And not using transform...well, if we decided to machine a second workpiece on the opposite side of the tombstone, it is certainly much faster to just use a transform op! The program may not be as fast as programming it all using separate operations (hey, how about "Optimize cut order" checkbox?), but it will save a lot of time.

[neurosis]

39 minutes ago, SlaveCam said:

What do you mean by "not very robust"?

Lets just say, I've used a lot better.

Cimatron's transform toolpath back in the 90's worked better and was more functional.

It doesn't look like much has been added  to MC's transform since the early days of X and I've had major issues with it in the past.  Issues that have caused near crashes on mirrored tool paths.   It was quite a few years back but I seem to remember it removing all of the clearance moves on the mirrored path.

[cncappsjames]

On 7/11/2023 at 9:40 AM, SlaveCam said:

CNC needs to give some love to HMC programmers too, it's all just fancy 5x stuff these days.

According to the UCC filings, HMC's aren't selling at anywhere near the rate they used to. For the most part they are dedicated to high production only these days. You can tool up a 5-Axis machine with workholding for a fraction of what it costs to put workholding on an HMC.

Don't hold your breath for much love in the future either. Maybe a little here or there. 

That gravitation to HMC ship has sailed and she ain't coming back.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

On 7/15/2023 at 10:30 PM, cncappsjames said:

That gravitation to HMC ship has sailed and she ain't coming back.

That's too bad. I love solving a headscratcher of a problem using the horz. For large production runs of maudite qualité A36 angle, there is no machine I'd trust more in the shop than our solid HMC. I've heard people aren't fond of programming or operating them, but I have not had that experience.

And I have definitely heard that they are one of the best ROI's if you have the work. I only have access to a 3+2 DMU50, so I was not aware that 5's were eating the HMC's lunch, so to speak.

[Aaron Eberhard]

That makes sense, though... If you're not doing a high enough volume of work to justify the person/robot time to physically move parts between OPs, you can often get a much more efficient program to produce one part at time with less setups on 5x.  If you don't know how long you'll be running those big production jobs it's a bit of insurance if that particular work goes away, plus, with pallet pools, a well tooled 5x can produce a myriad of parts running unattended which gives you a lot scheduling flexibility.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

I encounter this on 3 axis programs for an array of a few dozen parts.  I suppose one could put a "point" operation with forced toolchange just before the op to be transformed.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

18 hours ago, Matthew Hajicek - Singularity said:

I encounter this on 3 axis programs for an array of a few dozen parts.  I suppose one could put a "point" operation with forced toolchange just before the op to be transformed.

My usual workaround is to copy the op that calls the M00, remove the stop from it, and run the transform on the copy with the "disable posting in selected source operations" checkbox ticked. I think no matter what is done, you need 2 ops to pull off "only tool change the first time", and seeing the manual entry comment, then 2 of the same OPs tells me at a glance what is going on in that section.

[Tim Johnson]

On 7/15/2023 at 10:30 PM, cncappsjames said:

According to the UCC filings, HMC's aren't selling at anywhere near the rate they used to. For the most part they are dedicated to high production only these days. You can tool up a 5-Axis machine with workholding for a fraction of what it costs to put workholding on an HMC.

Don't hold your breath for much love in the future either. Maybe a little here or there. 

That gravitation to HMC ship has sailed and she ain't coming back.

Right now we have 11 HMC's in our shop with no.12 coming in October. After 21 years of Hmc's we've had to make maybe 5 "five axis fixtures" and I think all of those parts are obsolete.

[cncappsjames]

1 hour ago, Tim Johnson said:

Right now we have 11 HMC's in our shop with no.12 coming in October. After 21 years of Hmc's we've had to make maybe 5 "five axis fixtures" and I think all of those parts are obsolete.

You would be unusual in my territory and the US as a whole, hence why I cited UCC filings. A UCC filing happens whenever a piece of capital equipment is financed in any way shape or form and is a method in which collateral is secured. UCC stands for Uniform Commercial Code. I see those reports about every month or so.

Companies that sell only HMC's aren't moving the kinds of number they once enjoyed and that trend isn't reversing. Even if you had 100 HMC's it wouldn't even move the needle in the trend.

When I started in this business and at my current company (not considering commodity machines), HMC sales  outnumbered VMC sales 2:1 easily and outnumbered 5-Axis sales probably 3:1 or 4:1. Today it's probably 5-Axis sales  outnumbered HMC's 4:1 maybe even 5:1.

The whole point to my explanation is most companies (software included) look at trends and make development decisions based on things like UCC filings, Feature Requests, and probably even Social Media to a certain degree.

Brace yourself for additive technology to unseat development in other areas (like HMC specific features) as the technology continues to unseat subtractive manufacturing methods. 

Don't shoot the messenger.

 

[Jobnt]

2 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

Brace yourself for additive technology to unseat development in other areas (like HMC specific features) as the technology continues to unseat subtractive manufacturing methods. 

With additive manufacturing they're making fully functional Colt MkIVs, jet engines, buildings and even rocket ships, just to name a few.

I think it was last year or the year before that when Gibbscam released their first version of additive programming software that works along side subtractive. I didn't understand why at first but the tech is growing exponentially and getting very accurate/affordable. 

Gibbs was ahead of the curve on that one IMO. Not that I would ever tell them that. 

[cncappsjames]

Additive will only become cheaper and better as time goes on as well. Personally I don't believe it will completely replace subtractive (I dispute that assertion) for a variety of reasons but there's no question it is here to stay and will only gain in prominence and popularity.

Just a few weeks ago I used mine to replace a broken household part. Took less than 45 minutes from art to part. I would have been hard pressed to get into my car drive to Lowes, pick it up (if it was even available) and come back home in that timeframe. Would have cost gas and wear and tear on my vehicle too. 

[Tim Johnson]

5 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

You would be unusual in my territory and the US as a whole, hence why I cited UCC filings. A UCC filing happens whenever a piece of capital equipment is financed in any way shape or form and is a method in which collateral is secured. UCC stands for Uniform Commercial Code. I see those reports about every month or so.

Most all of the tool and die shops in this area have five axis machines and I do understand for most machining businesses it's the way of the future but we create and manufacture our own products so we can control the design of our parts to the point that purchasing 5 axis milling  machines would just add cost to our customers. We do have five axis lathes and mill-turns.

[cncappsjames]

25 minutes ago, Tim Johnson said:

Most all of the tool and die shops in this area have five axis machines and I do understand for most machining businesses it's the way of the [s]future[/s] NOW ...

It was the way of the future 15 years ago... it's the here and now.

Some of our customers in the the HMC world are REALLY getting back into the Custom MACRO B world to gain what (apparently) CAD/CAM systems functions are lacking in many instances. I would venture to say that I do exponentially more MACRO B training today than I did 20 years ago which many consider to be it's heyday when it was actually necessary for a wide variety of reasons.

You may want to explore/exploit the power of the Mastercam/IHS/Postbility Post Processor in addition to adding Custom MACRO B functions to it. I've said this before and I'll say it till the day I die, Mastercam's MP post language can actually make up for some application specific deficiencies in the software. Some people think of that as a negative, I actually think it's a positive because it allows the customer to tailor the output to meet their increasingly complex needs without reliance on the CAD/CAM software for all functionality.

JM2CFWIW

[Tim Johnson]

14 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

You may want to explore/exploit the power of the Mastercam/IHS/Postbility Post Processor in addition to adding Custom MACRO B functions to it. I've said this before and I'll say it till the day I die, Mastercam's MP post language can actually make up for some application specific deficiencies in the software. Some people think of that as a negative, I actually think it's a positive because it allows the customer to tailor the output to meet their increasingly complex needs without reliance on the CAD/CAM software for all functionality.

I first wrote MACRO B into my post in 2002 (V9) and added probe inspection in X5. I only program one part and use routers (currently 37) in my post to run up to 64 parts per pallet that can be turned on or off individually or as a group.

[Jobnt]

15 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

Mastercam's MP post language can actually make up for some application specific deficiencies in the software.

Spot-on, Beanie boy. Spot-on.

Speaking strictly from a v9 perspective, MP is it's own programming language and there's not much you can't do with it. I imagine it's gotten better over the years. 

[Tim Johnson]

3 hours ago, Jobnt said:

Spot-on, Beanie boy. Spot-on.

Speaking strictly from a v9 perspective, MP is it's own programming language and there's not much you can't do with it. I imagine it's gotten better over the years. 

The MP was very strong in V9. In V9 I wrote routers that virtually inverted and rotated the cutting paths as needed , checked if a part position was or wasn't being used before moving to that location and would check the next positions until it found another part or got to the end, made the next tool change and started the procedure all over again.

[cruzila]

On 7/19/2023 at 12:10 PM, cncappsjames said:

Additive will only become cheaper and better as time goes on as well. Personally I don't believe it will completely replace subtractive (I dispute that assertion) for a variety of reasons but there's no question it is here to stay and will only gain in prominence and popularity.

Just a few weeks ago I used mine to replace a broken household part. Took less than 45 minutes from art to part. I would have been hard pressed to get into my car drive to Lowes, pick it up (if it was even available) and come back home in that timeframe. Would have cost gas and wear and tear on my vehicle too. 

I've said for a very long time, that when they figure out "grain structure", the world will change overnight.

EDIT:

Then I just saw this in an article quoted:

"A team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University was testing the resilience of the metal, using a specialized transmission electron microscope technique to pull the ends of the metal 200 times every second. They then observed the self-healing at ultra-small scales in a 40-nanometer-thick piece of platinum suspended in a vacuum."

[SuperHoneyBadger]

1 hour ago, cruzila said:

when they figure out "grain structure", the world will change overnight.

Have you seen this one?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338480003_Grain_structure_control_during_metal_3D_printing_by_high-intensity_ultrasound

[cruzila]

44 minutes ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

Have you seen this one?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338480003_Grain_structure_control_during_metal_3D_printing_by_high-intensity_ultrasound

Oh my!!! looks like it is closer than I thought......I am not smart enough to know whether or not the numbers are close to basic alloy numbers .

[KFrey]

Sorry to interrupt the conversation going on here, but going back to the original subject of this thread, there is a request R-26861 to add a checkbox similar to the 'Remove Comments' checkbox, for removing force toolchange, I have no idea if anything is happening with this request, but it is there. Maybe this thread will help move it along.

........ Now back to Additive Manufacturing ...............