Tool Manager - Sorting Column Options

[SuperHoneyBadger]

Is there a way to add sorting fields beyond the default Tool Manager columns? Often sorting through (that last guy's) old programs, I want to check the RPMs of the tools at a glance before I start. Would be nice to spot an incorrect speed or feed immediately.

[Newbeeee™]

/swerve

X+....1x click and it can tell you G54/55 etc, RPM, T=D, Coolant, etc....

 

[Jake L]

7 hours ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

Is there a way to add sorting fields beyond the default Tool Manager columns? 

closest I could come up with was a right click > setup sheet

The default shows your RPM / Feed for each op. Definitely not a very friendly solution. 

2 hours ago, Newbeeee™ said:

/swerve

X+....1x click and it can tell you G54/55 etc, RPM, T=D, Coolant, etc....

What's the $ for X+?

I think I free demoed it once upon a time 

 

[Newbeeee™]

12 hours ago, Jake L said:

 

What's the $ for X+?

I think I free demoed it once upon a time 

 

Unsure now but if it's a few hunnerd it pays for itself easy

https://www.gmccs.de/xplus.php

 

[SuperHoneyBadger]

Thanks for the info! I've often wanted to try it out, maybe if there is some downtime, I'll look into it. Appreciate the responses

[Jobnt]

Momma always told me to never miss an opportunity. 

16 hours ago, Jake L said:

right click > setup sheet

... Definitely not a very friendly solution. 

It's a straight-up bad solution, but the easiest to get where you need to be without a decent .set file.

McMastercam really screwed the pooch with ActiveReports.

[crazy^millman]

2 minutes ago, Jobnt said:

Momma always told me to never miss an opportunity. 

It's a straight-up bad solution, but the easiest to get where you need to be without a decent .set file.

McMastercam really screwed the pooch with ActiveReports.

Where Jim Varco saved the day with them.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

Do you guys all consider X+ to be a necessity?

[Aaron Eberhard]

Like Ron, I use VarcoReports.   I considered that essential.   As I told Jim (Varco), it was the 3rd thing I bought when I set up my company, after getting my Mastercam Partnership agreement in place.

[crazy^millman]

14 minutes ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

Do you guys all consider X+ to be a necessity?

It is a great product and Gunther is top notch. i just needed ITAR support and with him being in a different country it rules him out for the work I mostly do.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

59 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

i just needed ITAR support and with him being in a different country it rules him out for the work I mostly do.

Noted. Thanks, I'd be in the same boat on that one.

[jpatry]

On 10/13/2023 at 9:57 AM, Aaron Eberhard said:

Like Ron, I use VarcoReports.   I considered that essential.   As I told Jim (Varco), it was the 3rd thing I bought when I set up my company, after getting my Mastercam Partnership agreement in place.

That looks really useful.

What other software tools (other than something like vericut, there's no way I can convince management to do that) do you use to make mastercam more effective?

[JParis]

9 hours ago, jpatry said:

(other than something like vericut, there's no way I can convince management to do that)

This is one I just managed to through.....Vericut & Force Optimization for 3 machine groups...as they say, "money talks & BS walks" well, suffice to say after going over everything and a solid presentation by Vericut, it was a done deal.

Ownership & upper management understand the $$$

[Aaron Eberhard]

13 hours ago, jpatry said:

That looks really useful.

What other software tools (other than something like vericut, there's no way I can convince management to do that) do you use to make mastercam more effective?

If you can't swing Vericut, at least talk to your reseller about getting your posts hooked up to machsim in Mastercam.  It's a fraction of the price for 98+% of the capability.  What it won't do is help with custom M-codes, process optimizations, etc., but you'll at least be able to trust the motion you're seeing in there!

Otherwise, it depends on your work. 

If you're doing mold/electrode making and you don't have a copy of MoldPlus, you're doing yourself a big disservice.  

Verisurf is a great product for CMMing & verification, but I really like them for reverse engineering. Their free add on tools (Thanks Ernie!) are great little time savers if you use those sort of functions often.

Honestly, some of the best money spent, though, establishing processes and procedures that reduce duplication.  

That could be a custom solution to solve a repetitive project that only your (or very few) companies need a solution for.  In that case, talking to someone like our very own Byte might make sense (TheeByte) to create a custom solution to your specific problem.

Most often, it's the little things that make life better.  Working through creating a tool and ops library will save you 10s-100s of thousands of dollars a year in redundancy.  Every time you're creating a 1/4-20 hole, you should be importing/exporting operations and just assigning geometry, for example.  If you're starting from scratch defining a tool, looking up previous feeds/speeds/etc., you're wasting 20+ minutes that should be handled in 20 seconds.   Creating a process & procedure template file that already has all of your company's levels/colors/fixtures/etc. will save you 20 minutes every time you start a new job.  Side effects are that it makes things go smoother on the floor and significantly easier to on-board a new person.

If you don't know how to leverage all that and really get to focus on the fun programming, final plug goes to Ron (https://5thaxisprogramming.com/) or (even more shameless plug) myself (https://vector-mfg.com/) as a sherpa that help you on the way.

 

[Jobnt]

51 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

Honestly, some of the best money spent, though, establishing processes and procedures that reduce duplication.  

...

Most often, it's the little things that make life better.  Working through creating a tool and ops library will save you 10s-100s of thousands of dollars a year in redundancy.  Every time you're creating a 1/4-20 hole, you should be importing/exporting operations and just assigning geometry, for example.  If you're starting from scratch defining a tool, looking up previous feeds/speeds/etc., you're wasting 20+ minutes that should be handled in 20 seconds.   Creating a process & procedure template file that already has all of your company's levels/colors/fixtures/etc. will save you 20 minutes every time you start a new job.  Side effects are that it makes things go smoother on the floor and significantly easier to on-board a new person.

#Quoteworthy 

[jpatry]

20 hours ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

Most often, it's the little things that make life better.  Working through creating a tool and ops library will save you 10s-100s of thousands of dollars a year in redundancy.  Every time you're creating a 1/4-20 hole, you should be importing/exporting operations and just assigning geometry, for example.  If you're starting from scratch defining a tool, looking up previous feeds/speeds/etc., you're wasting 20+ minutes that should be handled in 20 seconds.   Creating a process & procedure template file that already has all of your company's levels/colors/fixtures/etc. will save you 20 minutes every time you start a new job.  Side effects are that it makes things go smoother on the floor and significantly easier to on-board a new person.

Yeah, I do pretty much all of those things, I've got almost all of our milling tools properly defined in a library, call my commonly used toolpaths in several preconfigured variants are in a file I import from, I have a preconfigured template file and folder structure that I extract to a destination, rename, and dump .step and .pdf into.

Another thing I've done is exported my levels list to a .csv so I can import that when I get handed someone else's disorganized clownfestival of a file.

The sad part is there are several individuals who seem baffled as to why there would be a need for such process and consistency, preferring to do everything the hard way while simultaneously complaining about how had they have to work.

 

[crazy^millman]

32 minutes ago, jpatry said:

Yeah, I do pretty much all of those things, I've got almost all of our milling tools properly defined in a library, call my commonly used toolpaths in several preconfigured variants are in a file I import from, I have a preconfigured template file and folder structure that I extract to a destination, rename, and dump .step and .pdf into.

Another thing I've done is exported my levels list to a .csv so I can import that when I get handed someone else's disorganized clownfestival of a file.

The sad part is there are several individuals who seem baffled as to why there would be a need for such process and consistency, preferring to do everything the hard way while simultaneously complaining about how had they have to work.

 

You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Same with people we can do our best to show them more efficient and better ways, but until they want to own it it will never be adopted.

[Jobnt]

1 hour ago, jpatry said:

Another thing I've done is exported my levels list to a .csv so I can import that when I get handed someone else's disorganized clownfestival of a file.

Can you explain? 

[JParis]

Right click in the levels manager >> Save as csv

You can then right click in an empty level mangler and import the csv to get default naming structure that you may use

[Jobnt]

He said it helps with existing files, you said it's for new files. 

Sounded like he was using it to clean up existing files.

[JParis]

1 minute ago, Jobnt said:

He said it helps with existing files, you said it's for new files. 

Sounded like he was using it to clean up existing files.

I typically don't import it into existing files....I imagine it would work the same way...

Can't test that at the moment...system is crunching a 3D print estimate

[jpatry]

5 hours ago, Jobnt said:

He said it helps with existing files, you said it's for new files. 

Sounded like he was using it to clean up existing files.

It overwrites and subsumes the contents of any existing levels

[Simon Kausch]

On 10/16/2023 at 4:46 PM, Aaron Eberhard said:

If you're doing mold/electrode making and you don't have a copy of MoldPlus, you're doing yourself a big disservice.

 

We're doing molds, can you tell me a little bit more? What are the top features which makes it worth it for you?

[Aaron Eberhard]

4 hours ago, Simon Kausch said:

We're doing molds, can you tell me a little bit more? What are the top features which makes it worth it for you?

The highlights for me are the cool surface manipulation tools in it to create extensions, plugs, trims, etc.   There's also a really well done parting line creator.  If you do electrodes, there's an electrode maker that will take your parts and create the electrode and all supporting plates/fixtures/etc. for it.   

If you're more into trimming molds, the 5 axis toolkit makes it really easy to manipulate vectors and smooth out the motion on the edges, as well as auto-selecting edges to make selecting & generating the paths way faster and easier.

I've heard that the fixture plate/support structure designer works really well, but I haven't personally used it.    It looks like a time saver if you're doing larger molds you have to hold for trimming/secondary operations.