How Do Ya'll Handle Diffrent Machines

[connormac]

We have a 4 or 5 diffrent machines with diffrent max rpm's. How do ya'll handle programing 1 job to go on all machines? Do you program to the slowest machine. Or can you program to tha fastest and have the posts step speeds and feeds down for the slower ones. Or would you have to program each one by itself. Right now I am just programing to the slowest and not taking adavantage of the faster RPM's.

[Tom Szelag]

I'd probably program for the slowest and set them all for that. Then you have each machine running the same feeds and speeds, same tools on same material, so you should have very good repeatability in results.

[crazy^millman]

There are many different ways to handle this in Mastercam. This might be long so bare with me.

 

1st way could be with a operation default that is called the machine name. In this defualt you can have the tools set-up to match the horsepower, coolant requirmenets, clearance abilites such as if it a 4th axis or hortzional so be spefic to this machine. You can then have tool libary with certain materials ties to that machine and be very spefic to that machine, that tool on that machine and so forth.

 

2nd way would be just using tool libary where you have the set-up page using none as material and use speeds an feeds from tool. Here you have the perfect as you could call it speed and feed for each tool for each spefic purpose defined and then when you use this machine use that spefic libary for that tool. The difference here is that you will have to always change the parameter page but will have tools doing proven depths and speeds as well as feed on the certain materal you have it named for.

 

3rd you can use the libary of material and turn it to your needs then when you load a spefic material you have what you want now to cross it over to othermachines you could again name the materials spefic to each machine like Alum60x30 Fadal, Alum HaasVF9, or SSKIT2XI, and so forth. I think this opition is the most against you becuse it is prectanges and not actully numbers unless you set everything at a factor of 100% but then all drill will use that factor for every length depth and so forth again very limiting.

 

I know 1 and 2 sound the sanem but they are different. I have my tool set-up for the highest rpm machine. Most machine when they see an rpm higher than what they can do they just do what they can where as others will alarm so set-up your post to be the fail safe to catch you if you forget to think about it. If your Fadal's only have 10,000 rpms then make the posr limit 10,000 so if you default and it say 15,000 the post then covers you and only posts 10,000 same thing goes for feed rates.

 

Now what do you do for the posted NC files well I have all of our post for the different machine set-up to go to the root of the machine foler that we post code for that is used for DNC to the machines. The system they had set-up where I went was good so I all I did was just tell the post where to start cool thing is when you are in a session it will stay to the spefic place you are posting untill you call another post or start another session.

 

One thing I will point out is set-up your post to use the operation all the same way. I mean I have all of our defualt a fixture offset if none is selected the idea is that no matter the machime you will always get a fixture offet that si the defualt so there is speed in making the program as well as posting the program. The other idea is that if the machien you wated to use is busy a few quick speed and feeds changes if needed can be done and then you are off and running where as if you say do it some custom way for each machine or look to alot of hand editing to make program work on machien you then limit your ability to efficent and also in changing out work. Now I know it all sounds good in theory but a goal in which I hope to se everyone do and in doing so make us all one step closer to kicking manufacturing back over here and away from the people who are doing it chepaer but not better.

 

Sorry for the length but hope I got a good diccusion going on this one and helps you get a different idea on how possible you might look at apporaching this situation.

[connormac]

Thanks for the Input. I inherited my tool library from the previous programer. I need to go in and change a bunch of stuff. He was all book and no shop experiance. I'm going to print out what you said and try to save stuff diffrent ways. I have been working on learning mastercam ,working on posts ,and learning VB scripts. I have never gotten to that side of mastercam.

 

I emailed you that VB script. I put it on my tool bar.

[Tim Johnson]

If the programs are jobs that are run often, I would write for one machine then copy the operations to another group, change the speeds/feeds for each different max speed. I also keep seperate tool libraries for max speed/common tooling.

[Psychomill]

I have a post that recalculates the feed rates as according to the max rpm. I don't use it very much since all of our parts, in most cases, are dedicated to the machine it was set up on. But, we do have similar machines that we do change the set up over on and the spindles are different (ie: a 10k spindle and a 15k spindle on the same cell line). In this case, I program for the 15k spindle. If the part ends ups moving to the 10k spindle, I repost the same tool operations, only changing the post. The post recalculates the feed rate of every tool running over 10k to 10k by scaling. I've even used the same post to go from 15k to a 3500rpm spindle and it worked fine with a few minor changes at the machine. This beats going through every cut and editing in MC or at the machine.

 

For the most part, all of our machines in each cell are fairly similar to each other so I just have them pretty much memorized for max speed, feed, hp, machining cube, etc.

[kinglouie V]

I personnally like the post that recalculates. I think that would be the best maintenance free situation with the least cramps. Still waiting for a copy of the post referance guide that will hopefully ease me through these types of edits in my post. Our reseller sent one and showed up yesterday broke clean in half! Someone must have bent the envelope to fit in the mailbox. It takes some strength to break a disk so I assume the mailman was feeling a tad 'postal' Would anyone care to preview how this would look in a post while I wait for another copy? It would be helpful since our boss would like no edits (on the floor) going from one machine to another even for speeds and feeds. To my knowledge, only one machine on the floor will not successfully default to its max RPM, so it would still be an advantage to have this post logic. Our reseller (MLC) is working hard for us as this shop has greatly evolved since v9.1 sp2 purchase and has already provided us with a very complicated post that rotates work and posts for different machines. With that in mind it shouldn't be to difficult to add logic for max spindle speed. However, one example would go a long way.

[Psychomill]

What you do is you give it a conditional math problem for the feedrate based upon the max rpm setting at the top of the post. So, down the line, your feed triggers might look like this:

 

 

pss # set rpm to ssmax

savess = ss

if ss > ssmax, ss = ssmax

 

pfr # Don't output neg. feedrate

# this will scale the feedrate if the max rpm is excceded

scalefr = savess / ssmax

if savess > ssmax, fr = fr / scalefr

if fr > 0, fr

 

 

"ssmax" is the machine max rpm. 'ss' is what the post actually uses to run rpm. So, if 'ss' exceeds 'ssmax', the post calculates the reduction amount (scalefr). Then in feed, 'scalefr' is used to recalculate the new feedrate based upon the reduced speed.

 

I wrote this post back on V6 or V7 so some of the statements may look unfamiliar for V9 users (but they'll still work). There's some other stuff that needs to be formated in order for this to work so you can't just plug in what I wrote to your new post, but you get the idea on how to make this work . I also have one that calculates up based upon chip load (great for steel programs or going to really high rpm machines).

 

The post guide you're being sent should really help out... at least thats what I hear. I never had one (wish I did), I just keep playing around till things happen the way I want them to. Good luck!!

[kinglouie V]

thanks I'll try it out.

I'm hoping the new disk will be here soon

to help as it will be a great tool to have

around here. Especially when X is released.