Surfcam Truemill?

[cobra95kev]

Hey guys,

We here at SWPMFG also have a seat of Surfcam.

They have a toolpath called Truemill where the software adjusts the feedrate and radial cut constantly to maintain and even chipload and enables some really fast feedrates with normal carbide endmills in even hardened stainless.

 

Does Mastercam have a tool path comparable to this? If they do what version is it in and what is it called?

 

From what I saw this morning I was very impressed.

 

Thanks

Kevin C.

[88Matt]

highfeed button

 

Top right side of the toolpath tab just left of the stick of dynomite.

 

HTH

[cobra95kev]

Thanks,

Matt,

I love new toys!

 

Kevin C.

[88Matt]

Just make sure your post is set up for it.

[cobra95kev]

I have a mpmaster post that was for Okuma updated from Version 9. I posted an op and it looked fine to me.

 

Is there anything that I should look for?

 

Thanks

Kevin C.

[YoDoug®]

Cimco HSM for mastercam has a toolpath called adaptive roughing. This is the closest to Surfcam Truemill I have seen.

 

The Surfcam toolpath limits the cut by tool engagement angle not radial step over like most softwares. I do some side work here in town. One of my customers had another contract programmer with Surfcam challenge them, His toolpaths against mine. I used every trick I had, trochoidal cutting, highfeed, vericut optipath. My most tweaked MCX HST toolpaths were twice as long and lower tool life than Surfcam. Needless to say that customer no longer calls me for mill programming.

 

BTW, I still beleive Mastercam is a better overall CAM software, but I wish we had the same roughing paths.

[gcode]

My big complaint with Mastercam High Feed

is that you cannot use wear comp and output G41

and G40. If you do, your posted code willbe really jacked up.

Its my understanding that they are working on this issue

[Thee Rickster ™]

Both Software,s have issues, don't they all.

(Surfcams verify shows rapid gouges

Mastercam has xform project (or squash older vers)

 

 

...but put the two together...(daydreaming again)

 

The Leftover material cutting in MC is

critically better than that of Surfcams

Rest material. (That is huge IMO)

 

I don't find the path to cut longer in MC only the

file size bigger.

 

Plus MC really is showing huge progress with

there enhancements. Soon they will surpass many

softwares on 'issues' and they will prosper

greatly with their maintence program.

 

M2C's

[RACINGCONVERTERS]

Cobra,

 

If I remember right watch the tool change position and home return comands That post gives you a G53 Z0 which will put your cutter in the table or part.

 

I will look at my post and try to see if I changed anything else.

[cobra95kev]

Thanks Matt,

I will watch for that.

 

 

Kevin C.

[esherbro]

It's probably bad form to toot my own horn here, but our new toolpath service, VoluMill, (which is a downloadable Mastercam C-Hook from our web site www.volumill.com) has beaten TrueMill in 2-axis pocketing tests. I have a lot of confidence in it because I implemented TrueMill when I was at Surfware. The other designer of TrueMill and I left Surfware a few months ago and started Celeritive Technologies, and we came up with VoluMill. It's designed from the ground up, with no Surfware intellectual property at all, and it does not control the tool engagement angle as TrueMill does. It does, however, remove corners from the toolpath and carefully controls the rate of material removal to maintain a consistent tool load, so tool life is significantly extended even at much higher feeds and speeds. The interesting thing about this is that you can run at TrueMill-like speeds but the path is much shorter, which leads to lower cycle times.

 

Perhaps the most interesting thing for this forum is that it is already available for Mastercam X2. You can download the client from our site and install it as a C-hook (there are installation instructions on our website). It's a subscription service, so you'll need to sign up for an account, but it's free for 15 days and you can cancel your subscription for any reason during the trial period and not get charged. Even after the trial period, we expect that the service will pay for itself even if you use it only about a half a day per month, given the faster cycle times and greatly extended tool life. We hope you find it useful, and please let us know how it works for you. There's a video of it cutting and plenty more information on our site, so please drop by if you're interested.

 

Thanks, and apologies for the commercial here, but I think it's relevant to the topic at hand.

[cobra95kev]

Do you guys have a C-hook for XMR2?

 

Thanks

Kevin C.

[gcode]

Interesting chook... not sure your business

model is going to fly though.. a monthly charge that goes on forever is not an attractive proposition. I think most people would rather buy outright and pay a reasonable annual maintenance fee.

[YoDoug®]

We just purchased Cimco-hsm for mastercam. I would put the Cimco adaptive roughing against Truemill any day. The first production job we have used it on we saved 50% roughing time. $4000/yr svaings plus extended tool life. The part is 416T SS 28Rc, we now rough at 125 IPM, .75deep cuts, .015-stepover.

 

There is a free trial download from Cimco. You will be impressed. We have one floating license on the network to share among three programmers. Well worth the money.

[Colin Gilchrist]

I'm curious to see if anyone will go for it too. I personally would rather pay for a module and have unlimited access to it. The way the service is described, you would pay the same amount if you use it once a month or a thousand times a month.

[esherbro]

Kevin,

 

We don't currently have a version for X, but I could try to get my hands on a copy of the X SDK and rebuild it, which theoretically should work. I don't have a copy of X myself, so would you be willing to test it and see how it works if I can get it built for you?

[esherbro]

gcode, Colin,

 

Thanks for the comments. This is an unusual model for the CAM world, I grant you, although it's common elsewhere; if you use a hosted CRM system, QuickBooks Online, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Office Live, etc., you're already used to software that you rent rather than buy outright. And if you're used to paying an annual maintenance fee, this is not very different except that with the rental model you don't have to pay a large fee up front to acquire a license. We also get to deliver improvements to the community as soon as they are ready and tested, and typically you won't have to download anything or upgrade since the improvement is made on our servers. You just get the benefits next time you make a toolpath.

 

Having said all this, I do appreciate the feedback and will pass the comments along to the rest of the company. If you have any more comments, I'd love to hear them.

[esherbro]

DS,

 

I'm glad you've had success with Cimco-HSM. I do remember seeing TrueMill cut P20 with a 3/8" tool 1.5" deep at about a 0.025 stepover and 400 IPM, which might be a bit more aggressive than what you were describing. I think Surfware probably still has the video up on their site. We have been mostly testing VoluMill in aluminum (it's been out less than a month) but again I expect that we will be able to use similar parameters and benefit from a greatly reduced toolpath length to beat it.

 

I've seen adaptive clearing run, and it does very nicely on things like machining cores, but in the part I saw it went into a channel and started doing lots of troichodal-like looping motion. It also seemed to do the same kind of thing in an enclosed pocket. TrueMill has some looping, particularly with small stepovers, but it appears to be less. We have a different approach from adaptive clearing and TrueMill which we think reduces the overall path length significantly.

 

If you're still curious, I hope you'll consider signing up for the free trial (it's pockets only with or without islands at the moment, but we'll have full 2-axis roughing up before too long) and letting us know how it goes so we can continue to improve it based on your experience.

[esherbro]

Sorry, I appear to have remembered the cutting parameters wrong in that P20 test. I just saw the video again, and it appears to be a 5/8" cutting at 1.5" deep at 404 IPM and about a 0.042 maximum stepover.

[cobra95kev]

Evan,

I sent you an E-mail.

 

Thanks

Kevin C.

[gms1]

Ive been thinking about trying out that cimco-hsm addon just havent had time.

No thanks to 'renting' software.

[jeff]

esherbro,

Is that Chook available for V9?

[Mic]

Hi esherbro

 

Always interesting with new cam stuff.

 

A couple of questions about your software.

 

Truemill keeps a constant engagement angle and variable feed to achive a constant load. Right?

 

VoluMill looks like it uses a constant feed so I guess you then constanly adjust the stepover in order to also achive the constant load?

 

What makes this approach better than the first one you developed?

 

Does VoluMill also open a pocket with trochoide motion?

 

Perhaps you could upload a sample toolpath for me to backplot?

 

[ 11-02-2007, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: Mic ]

[Colin Gilchrist]

What happens when a customer creates a toolpath with your service today (assuming they are a customer), then cancels the subscription down the line (say months later), and now a rev change comes to the part? How do they regen the toolpath?

 

What happens when the internet is just plain down and you need to get a part done?

 

I like the look of the volumill software, but I think you should really think about offering a stand alone module that can run on a user's computer. There are a ton of options out there that you can use to protect your DRM and easily license your products.

 

No one is going to want to wait for a toolpath to get processed over the internet. I have toolpaths that take hours to calculate. How do you know what is happening while you wait? Unless you have some amazing algorythims that are multi-threaded to the max, how are you going make the calculation time reasonable?

 

The problem with background processing from a user's (my) perspective when you are roughing surfaces, is that you need to see and sometimes use the results of your roughing before you can really continue machining.

 

I'm trying to offer you some advice on how to make your product a comercial success, because I think it has some serious potential. I just agree with Gcode, that the "internet only" model of using your product, has some serious issues and will reduce your potential market considerably.

 

You made a point about people being on Maintence. This is for software they already own. They can cancel maintence at any time and continue to use Mastercam (at whatever their current level is) forever. I know people that are still running version 6 to program a wood router. Why haven't they upgraded? Because they don't need to.

 

Just my .02¢,

[mold100]

quote:

---

You made a point about people being on Maintence. This is for software they already own. They can cancel maintence at any time and continue to use Mastercam (at whatever their current level is) forever. I know people that are still running version 6 to program a wood router. Why haven't they upgraded? Because they don't need to

---

i agree with you about the update in some cases. Although Iam not a mastercammer any longer, maybe someday when i plunge into my own seat specially now my solidworks is paid off. Oops back to mypoint, technically the only thing you said wrong was OWN a seat, you never own it you just paid off the license to use it, try and sell it on ebay and watch what happens. i pay my sworks mait cause of customer demands and file transfering.Other than that the same things i use in 2008 sworks I did almost as easy in 2005 not sure if its work the fee per year.