Mastercam on Mazak lathe

[race 10]

Hello. My company is currently looking at software to program our Mazak lathes. Our lathe controllers range from a T32 to the new matrix versions. My questions are will mastercam communicate with the mazak? Will the program be in EIA format? Any help would be greatly appeciated.

[crazy^millman]

Yes it will be EIA format. Cool thing is you can use the Mazatrol side of the machine to control the tools and just programs everything using EIA. I would recommend for simple things like jaws and other simple tasks to keep using Mazatrol, but for more complex tasks use Mastercam.

 

HTH

[Dave.L]

Becareful, not ALL Mazak lathes come with .EIA programing ability if they are Mazatrol. That is often an option at a price. Check to see which machines have it. I think to add it's around 2K.

[race 10]

Thanks for the info guys. I think that my problem is now that I do not have the EIA option on any of my lathes.

[crazy^millman]

Yeah that will be a big problem. Good luck in your quest.

[Dave.L]

I would not do it myself, but I know some company is out there that has cam for mazatrol. Maza-Cam or something like that.

[race 10]

Dave- I have looked into that. You are correct it is mazaCam. I just have a hard time trying to justify two different cam softwares. Besides I am mainly a mill guy and love MasterCAM. I just talked to my IT guy that has been dealing with our local Mastercam rep and he is under the impression that the Cimco editor will make the program look like the conversational "Mazatrol" program. Does anyone know anything about this?

[3R!< W3NG3R]

Do a 30 day trial. Then you will know for sure.

[Dave.L]

We have a Mazak lathe too. We program it with Mazatrol at the machine. I am not a big fan of that but it works.

 

If we ever start using CAM for it, I will buy the option for .EIA programming even though it's 2K, but we only have one machine with this issue, so it's easy for us compared to someone with many machines. Altough, I bet Mazak would give you a deal to do all of your machines.

[Dave Ball]

Cimco will not make the EIA program "look" like a Mazatrol program. However Cimco does have an option to view native Mazatrol program files but its just for viewing and printing, no editing capability.

[Josh T™]

We use MC for our Mazak SQT200MS Turning Center with no issues. Ours has live tooling with a sub-spindle and we're running parts that I programmed on MC this morning. Buy the .EIA option and you'll be set.

 

FYI: With the exception of a few M Codes the code for the Mazak .EIA format is basically Fanuc. I used MP Master to create a post and it works great.

 

HTH

Josh

[Todd Tracey from Fastech]

For this particular customer, if they had to buy the eia option for all the lathes they have, it would be a bundle. I'm trying to get a response from Camaix to see if their Mazatrol post covers lathe or not. Hint Camaix are you there??

[Guest SAIPEM]

MazaCAM is really GeoPath with a special setup for Mazatrol.

http://www.mazacam.com/

 

If all you ever do is native Mazatrol, it's worth it.

If you have a mix of machine tools, forget about GeoPath/MazaCAM.

It is the equivalent of Mastercam V5 Lathe.

[Joe788]

quote:

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It is the equivalent of Mastercam V5 Lathe.

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So basically it's the equivalent of Mastercam X4 Lathe?