OT Pro E Manufacturing

[DavidB]

Any one here had any experience with ProE Manufacturing?

We use ProE for design.

Now Managment are asking me to look at ProE Manufacturing.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I've seen it, not touched it, and it looked pretty cumbersome and unintuitive.

[DavidB]

James did you get my email?

[pronc]

I use it to program mill, lathe, mill-turn and wire edm. Plus design. Shoot me an email if you have question.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

No. You send me something?

[DavidB]

pronc,

You have mail thanks

[DavidB]

James I replyed to your email about posts

[DavidB]

Had ProE out here today.I'll be giving ProE Manufacturing a shot for 60 days.

Then making a final disision!

There where pluses and minus of what I sore today.

[HevyMetl]

David,

 

We use it here exclusivly in the R&D shop. These guys are doing DOE's everyday and many variations on a theme. IT is awesome at that. IF I hand one of the programmers over there a trod with a list of endmills that I need used it takes them signifigantly longer to get the first job done. Now if I change the model slightly by adding a new feature or surface it quickly regenerates the feature with little to no intervention on the operators part. The Vericut option that they taught is not better than verify becuase it is so dumbed down that you can only verify your NCL (proe's NCI)data.

 

ProE requires alot of upfront work if you want to be productive with it. You have to create you machining cells, your base operations, and parameters, because if you go in setting them on every job you will spend hours setting this up. Make sure they provide you with a tooling database you will spend months developing that. Our R&D shop had 1 guy dedicated to operations and tooling for close to a year. Now after that was done it really works great.

 

We were looking to switch the mold shop over because of some supposed surfaceing improvements, but the new HIGHSPEED option in MR1 is freaking awesome, our Makino eats that stuff up and the surface finishs are even better.

[DC Gorn]

Back around 98-99 I did all the training for version 19.

 

1st day of Lath class.

Teacher: You can do anything you want in Pro-manufacturing

3rd day

Me: How do I pinch off the burr in the back of the ID so I can transfer part to the 2nd spindel.

Teacher: Pause, You will have to right a C code routine to do that. Me: I don't know C code. Teacher: Your company should have someone that can program C.

 

It was right at that point I decided Pro-Manufacturing was a addon not writen by people who had a clue about machining.

 

Just my 2 cents

[Müřlıń®]

They have Wildfire2 here with the Manufacturing.

 

I use it for assemblies and large projects. Also Manufacturing has the mold components in it.

 

I use that for splitting the mold and designing the cores and cavities.

 

As far as the machining goes, Mastercam blows away Proe Manufacturing hands down for what we do.

 

Course all we do over here is large 3-d stuff.

 

I can delete all the geometry, merge a eo/changed file, repick the drive surfaces and boundaries and have the toolpaths regenerated faster in most cases.

 

The only way Proe is faster as far as e0/'s are concerned, is if the geometry was simple to start with.

 

I have been working on large crankshaft dies with wicked surface configurations and Proe Manufacturing is not even in the same class with Mastercam when it comes to machining steel.....I use the high-feed option on EVERY job.

 

 

quote:

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Pro-Manufacturing was a addon not writen by people who had a clue about machining.

---

yup....

[DavidB]

The DEMO I sore was a beta of wildfire3, it will be released soon.

 

Yes Vericut is there verify tool. But just like Mastercam it uses an Intermediate NC file.

 

My biggest concern is posts,I have NO support down under from my MC reseller it's pathetic.

 

ProE have Gpost which is there post editing tool which looked great.Cadtrain online training.Local support

 

I will have support with ProE.

The demo version Im getting is a full working system so I'll give it the 60 days and see how it goes.

[HevyMetl]

David,

 

Cadtrain is good, but go to the Manufacturing class. G-post is very generic. It will create a post and it will work, but our reseller could not customize it like he promised and we ended up having to go to ICAM for posts. Fadal 5 axis with sub spindle, Fadal 4 axis, Benchman 4 axis, Makino Pro A control, and Makino wire edm ran us in the 35K range. The fadal 5 axis with integrated sub spindle was a b!tch though. It still is only soso. I keep wanting to give it a try with MasterCAM but alas no time.

[DC Gorn]

ICam Big bucks! Get Mastercam, buy your post through Cimco and just use there online support. I did all post support online and my dealer was only 40 miles away. When you have an issue you just need to send the MCX file showing the problem what your post is out putting and a file showing what the code is you want. Next day post shows up all fixed.

[DavidB]

Started using ProE.

One thing I do like is it knows your stock at all times.

Say I have a cube on a 5-axis machine I face 10mm off the top face, then I want to face the right hand side. Proe knows there is 10mm less stock on the top surface so it reducess the facing erea. To do this in mastercam a boundry would have to be created.

The other thing is Proe knows what is your part your billet and your fixture.

Anyway I'm still Mastercaming at the moment

[Bruce Caulley]

Sounds like fun David, learning something new is never a bad thing. We have a UG 2d manufacturing license here gathering dust and I would love to find the time to learn it. Catia and vericut are top of my to do list though.

 

Bruce

[Kannon]

DavidB,

We will be starting this as a "supplement" to our programming soon. I am thinking modeling in Pro, machining in Mastercam.

[DavidB]

Hey Bruce how have you been? I hear you will be very busy lucky you we as so quite

 

Kannon,

Our company use ProE for all modelling and design so to look at ProE manufacturing was the next step.I still use MC and I am looking at ProE NC over th enext 5 months and I will determine then wether we go down this path.

[HevyMetl]

David are you guys making molds, or production machining. I could really see the benefit if you were doing production machining of family parts. One off mold machining I have found MasterCam to be surperior. Material recognition is great in Pro and so are solid feature recoginitions. Their highspeed is weak in my opinion. If you try and cut small detailed electrodes you will pull your hair out getting a programming strategy that does not break your features, and still allow you some speed of processing. Buy what ever libraries you need for pro. I have spent alot of time designing cutters and fasteners just to find out that Pro offers these through third parties.

[DavidB]

John,

At the moment I work at a company that only make Aerospace parts in low volums.

[HevyMetl]

Pro is very powerful in the 5axis realm. Our posts were quite expensive though for those machines. Have you guys looked into G-post, or are going to go with ICAM.

[DavidB]

At the moment I'm just working out how to machine in ProE.

The reseller then will show me Gpost, he says it is a visual way to edit posts. I have not seen it as yet.

I have not done a post other than a MC post in Cimco editor before.

The posts are a concern as with any CAM package. I have 3 different 5-axis machines here, a Horizontal 4-axis and 4 Lathes with C and Y axis.

[HevyMetl]

BIG MONEY to switch. G-post is good for standard stuff. If you need custimazation you have to learn their macro language and syntax. We just had a post written by ICAM for one of the new 4 axis Hass office mills and it cost us around 8K, and then only "Special" thing we had done was a Renishaw laser tool setter. They also charged us around 2K for maintenance for the first year to work out any bugs.

[DavidB]

That is BIG $ for posts WOW

Maintenance for posts

[HevyMetl]

Get your reseller to discuss this with you before your company invests alot of time and money just to find out you need to drop another wad of cash on posts. Our reseller said g-post would do everything out 5 axis fadal needed, until we showed him the sub spindle that was hanging off of the side our head. He then pushed us back to ICAM for that one. I don't want to even talk about the cost on that one.