Surface finish contour

[ccd1062]

Has anyone else found that processing surface finish contour programs with small stepdowns take an unusual amount of time since version 9 came out? I can't figure out what to do and Mastercam support hasn't helped.

[MACHINEMASTERG]

have you loaded the latest patches

[cadcam]

How many and how complicated surface are talking and what is to long?

[Roger Peterson]

If you have exactly vertical surfaces they do take a long time. This has been sent in to QC. If you have a floor surface or you can create one try just not picking the vertical surfaces as drive surfaces and if you have a floor surface the toolpath will step down until it reaches the floor based on your max stepdown.

 

good luck

[ccd1062]

I have downloaded all the latest patches. It doesn't seem to matter how many or how large or small the surfaces are. It seems to work fine with .005 step downs but if I'm using tiny cutters with a .0005 step down it takes forever. When I pull up task manager to see if the program has locked up it spends a lot of time not responding but isn't locked up. It seems to jar it into action a bit when I pull up my task manager. I am using windows 2000 NT and thinking that is the culprit.

[wildcat99]

I don't know about version 9, but in 8.1.1 Filtering sped this up tremendously for me. It also greatly reduced the file size of my programs.

 

Note: I left the "Create Arcs" box unchecked as I've read here that this can cause problems on some machines/controls.

 

But if your machine/control can handle it, "Create Arcs" speeds processing even more. I haven't had the guts to actually try it on our machine, though.

[K Reed]

YES....Filter arcs can be bad. I've had some issues with filter arcs enabled ,nd my machine will not run the program. ( helical arc move to small error on Fadal 88hs control) That's an easy fix, Just set the minimal arc move in filter options to a higher number, say .05". Works great!

The bad one is in surface/finish/scallop!! That sucker tries to cut an arc about 60 ft in dia. on the vertical y/z plane from z zero. That was a lucky catch on my part, because the machine would have run to z- limit ( after chewing up a vise) had I not caught it in the machines graphics display .

Kinda off subject , but I wanted to share

[Guest]

ccd1062:

 

Have you read the tech section on speeding up Mastercam? Here is a link to it.

Speed up Mastercam