Wait codes again for Mill/Turn.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

We can talk Esprit price all we want. Unfortunately I have no idea what the price is though.

 

If they do $20,000,000 in sales and 25% of those were lost sales for Mastercam because of no Mill/Turn, that would be $5,000,000 in lost sales from Esprit alone. Maybe not a huge portion of CNC's overall gross revenue but you'd have to put up a few Top 10 dealers COMBINED to come up with that kind of revenue from my estimation.

 

The other thing that's missing that is HUGE to our customers is Load Balancing. right now, you have to guesstimate and with no colission detection and such.... makes it tough

 

:crickets:

 

The silence is just deafening(sp?)

 

GUess they're looking to stay out of a street fight they can't win.

[Cjones]

Anyone have an approx price on partmaker? I've heard that for mill/turn applications and swiss machining it is great. Just curious on it's price tag compared to others.

TY,

Chris

[Rodney J]

Hey guys, faily new member here. I thought I would share. We have a dilema! We have (2) Mori-Seiki NZ2000 T2Y2 on order, along with a NT3200. We are wondering how we are going to drive these monsters(It gets better). We currently use 4 different software packages to get the job done. Fanuc capt for lathes, Master cam for live tool lathes, part maker for swiss lathes, and cimatron for our mills. Why we have accumualated all these different packages is beyond me, evolution along with personal preference I guess. We are being asked by management to get on the same page, and pick one package everyone can use. (easier said than done) Any way, I called our Master Cam re-seller and asked them if master cam was working on the mill/turn support. They also told me that X3 would support the mill/turn. (Multi-tasking, as they referred to) due out in April. Any Suggestions on our current library on Cam packages to choose from?

[GoetzInd]

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Anyone have an approx price on partmaker? I've heard that for mill/turn applications and swiss machining it is great. Just curious on it's price tag compared to others.

TY,

Chris

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Chris,

For your application I would say 10K would be a safe bet. Although I think MC does pretty well on single turret apps. Multitasking is where it runs out of steam.

 

Mike

[Thee Dragracer1951]

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Bummer. I want a twin spindle live tooled machine. I DON'T want to have to learn another piece of software.

 

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Jim the current lathe package can handle a twin spindle single turret lathe with X,Z,C,Y,W and B axis with Live tooling very well.

 

It is twin turrets that are the problem.

 

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Cheers

Greg

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Oh good. My head was starting to hurt thinking about twin turrets.

[YoDoug®]

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They also told me that X3 would support the mill/turn. (Multi-tasking, as they referred to) due out in April.

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Who is they, and did you ask them if they meant April 2008 or 2009?

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

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...I called our Master Cam re-seller and asked them if master cam was working on the mill/turn support. They also told me that X3 would support the mill/turn. (Multi-tasking, as they referred to) due out in April...

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ROFLMAO!!!!!

 

April 2009 considering CNC's recent (the last DECADE) track record. ROFL!!!!!

[Bruce Caulley]

For those considering splashing big money on another package, how many have vericut? Not a substitute for the shortcomings described I know, but similar money may get the verification and confidence sorted out.

 

A reseller said April? Clown.

 

Bruce

[crazy^millman]

April of what year is right, sorry but I have a hard time seeing that happening. I think West-Tec is going to see something that the Beta people have not seen.

[crazy^millman]

Ok back to the topic at hand anyone have ideas t ogo about what I asked up front? Thoughts on this with some like the freehand chook. Be very nice if someone could develop a mouse driven toolpath editor that was sync code based to work with a turning operation or a chook that created a turning operation at was mouse driven. The logic for the turning operation to me is not super complicated. Material Dia. - (finish dia/depth of cut per side)= toolpath. May have 60 total points then work out an alogrthim to make the point equal to upper and lower. Biggest thing would be like a finish toolpath on the last cut to keep it balanced so might need it to look like this Material Dia. - [(finish dia)-(amount of material for last cuts)]/depth of cut per side to get it to work out to were the cuts are balanced. Ok so know all you programmers what do you think up for the challenge??? Me I still have to learn programming so I might have it done the time this come out.

[Greg Williams]

If you are an Okuma user you could always look at this one

 

Okuma

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

That's pretty cool... if you like Okumas...

[Greg Williams]

Virtual Monitor uses a copy of the machine parameters and the Collison avoidance system (CAS) Parameters from P200 controls. The CAS tooling and setups can also be transfered to the machine.

 

so in theory any machine alarm will be picked up by this software

 

But as ya say it is only for Okumas

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

It's liek CAMPlete for Matsuuras.

 

 

CAMplete IS what MachSIM wants to be when it grows up.

[crazy^millman]

Well that is what Esprit looks like right now as part of their package where Mastercam falls so short. I want people to understand I like Mastercam and want it to be the package we all it to be. My job is hard enough and fighting my CAM package should not be part of that equation. I have to agree with James and CNC need to come out and be straight up and having dealer tell customers the Mill/Turn will be released in April is unethical, and keeps adding to the black eye they already have about this product. We as a company did not go out and get Mastercam to support or Mill/Turn capabilities. We had Mastercam and got the post once we got our Integrex. That took almost a year before we got the right post, complete crap that had to happen another subject I will go into. Misleading customers to get sales is making more problems for CNC and had big problems for them. Esprit sales guy even talked about 2000 when Mastercam made a big presentation at IMTS talking about MATTS and it coming out the next Spring that was 7 years ago. I was not there and have no idea about it being factual. I do know MATTS and/or Mill/Turn capabilities for Mastercam have been talked about since I have been coming to this forum. So June this year will be 4 years and still not done???? I have seen my share if threads about customers not happy about being promised Mill/Turn was coming and not delivered.

[MIL-TFP-41]

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CAMplete IS what MachSIM wants to be when it grows up.

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provided it does actual G-Code simulation....I agree

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

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...provided it does actual G-Code simulation...

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It does not do that exactly, but it does not need to either. It takes the NCI/APT/etc..., converts it to G-Code/Post Processes the NCI, then simulates and colision detects it's own code that it created. So if I want to make a manual edit in the program to that program, it will simulate that change right then. It does not(very well anyway) take G-Code from an external source and simulate that.

 

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...Esprit sales guy even talked about 2000 when Mastercam made a big presentation at IMTS talking about MATTS and it coming out the next Spring that was 7 years ago...

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When it comes even to basic turning my boss FORBIDS us AE's to even talk to our customers about Mastercam. He knows the issues and does not want us to steer our customers into the rats nest that is Mastercam Lathe. Sorry to say CNC has earned this all on thier own. Too busy off doing Art and Router - creating new add-ons as opposeded to maturing their existing product line I guess.

 

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...Misleading customers to get sales is making more problems for CNC and had big problems for them...

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That's 50/50 dealers and CNC and speculation on both parts. Generally not good to speculate a customer into buying your product when YOU STOP DEVELOPMENT ON IT FOR SEVERAL YEARS

[Thad]

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A reseller said April? Clown.

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April 1st. BTW, your shoe is untied.

 

Thad teh glad he doesn't have lathe

[YoDoug®]

Our next machine purchase later this year is most likely going to be a twin spindle, twin Y turret lathe. Maybe an Okuma or Mori. I am putting together a part estimate to justify the machine. You can bet I am going to include $20,000 for software to program it. I cant justify spending 200 grand on a machine then only being able to program it to run like a simple lathe. Hopefully X3 will be out with the functionality needed by the time we purchase the machine, but I am going to be ready for what is needed.

[YoDoug®]

Kind funny story, We have one seat of Esprit mill here. One of the model makers in the Industrial design department was using it. He started having more lathe parts needed for the models he was making, so he got a quote for upgrading Esprit with the multi-tasking package. He got it approved for the budget for this year. Then I came along and talked him out of it. I said lets get you on Mastercam, that way we could help him, configure post, etc. So we added another seat of mastercam and decided not to renew our Esprit maintenance. Now we have the new Star machine to program. DOH!

[Chris Parish]

James:

 

come on you know the drill... it comes down to return on investment... quick buck so they can spend it on other areas of development... unfortunatly it has been too long

[CAM-mando]

OK, we have been at V9.1 and are ready to update.

 

We have multiple seats of Mill, Lathe and Wire.

 

A few months back we purchased a twin spindle Hardinge with live tooling (single turret).

 

Can lathe handle this at all?

 

Given that I have a minimum of 5 employees who would be going to training and the update costs to X2, I have a serious decision to make here.

[DrewG]

I haven't been on this forum for some time. I cannot believe it's been 4 years since we switched to Esprit from M/C for the very same problem-Mill/Turn!!! We went thru these very same issues 4 plus years ago. It's really unbelievable: when it comes to buying a Mill/Turn machine-you have to find out about software FIRST, before making a final decision on which manufacturer's machine you should buy. It's no good spending $500,000.00 plus on a mill/turn if you don't have the software in place to run it efficiently. Believe me, we found out the hard way, very hard way!!!!

[crazy^millman]

How is it going Drew? I demoed Espirt as you can see. Yes we are still dealing with this. I did get my own fix to some things done, but still no way to verify code expect on the machine. See ya around maybe.

 

Commando it will program that machine. I recommend you either buy a post, or get started on the mplmaster or generic 4 axis lathe post if staying with Mastercam. I am programming our Integrex with almost no problem using Mastercam. I just have no way to verify code.

 

HTH

[DrewG]

Crazy-- As far as Esprit, they're biggest "draw" is their "simulation". I've spoke with so many buyers in similar situations as mine 4 years ago, and after looking at the competition--Gibbs, Partmaker, EdgeCam and Esprit, everyone leans towards Esprit because of the simulation and their graphics. This is NOT to say Esprit is the best, its just that Esprit's simulation seems to "close the deal". I don't believe that buyers will be "making chips" with Esprit faster than any of the others. In fact, I believe both Gibbs and Edgecam to be easier to learn and thus make parts.

As stated by others, my staff and I all felt that Esprit was very difficult to learn when compared to M/C or Gibbs for instance. We spent approx. 2 years working with Esprit, Gibbs, Edgecam, and UG NX. We loved UG NX and if they didn't give me a quote of almost 100K for a seat of their software, simulation, and post, we would be using it. We all thought UG NX was the "cat's meow" and would've loved to have been using it. if I hit the lottery, I would buy UG tomorrow. UG could run every machine in the shop; milling, turning, mill-turns, 3-5 axis, etc.. with the type of tool paths you want.