Step - Check this out and comment below

[Rekd™]

+1 Iskandar.

 

I work in a shop where 1/3 of the employees are engine ears. (Well, there's three people all together, and one's an engine ear.) This guy is good. I'm teaching him to do setups already. He has a very extensive background in metal fab. (He used to run 60+ machine facility) He has a very good understanding of what's possible and what's not. (He's taught me a couple things about machining, as a matter of fact. )

 

'Rekd teh It's not luck, it's superior skill and cunning

[Müřlıń®]

One thing I see wrong with keeping the engineering staff separate from the machinists is that so much gets lost in translation.

 

An engineer will design something and send it to the shop floor, but he wont see the project to the end.

 

Instead, he relies on feed back from the guys in the shop to base his analysis of his work on.

The feedback he gets, may or may not be correct, depending on how good your guys are that live on the floor.

 

Then he goes back to to his cubical and designs the next project based on the flawed data he has gathered.

 

I think this is why in the shops of the future, the engineers/machinists must evolve into one job. Seeing a job all the way to the end, keeps your skills sharp. If you dont use 'em, you'll loose 'em...

 

Just makes sense to me. I already see this happening in alot of my competitors shops....

 

 

Murlin

[MACHINEMASTERG]

we have 6 enginears 3 came here with experiance 3 are newbies that for there first few mounths here did just that james shadowed the 2 lead machinest to see how things get done down here in the shop i can see the difference every day working with the newbies they just get it!! and the older guys dont and dont care to ..i also think designing in solidworks helps ..making models is simmilar to cutting metal if they cant model it we cant machine it

[Andris Skulte]

I guess I might as well chime in too (from the other side)... I'm one of those engineers (wooo wooo!!! chugga chugga chugga...) in a small 15 guy shop, and have been learning/doing manufacturing. I'd come up with a design, and then have to figure out how to manufacture it. At first, it was come up with the design, and bounce ideas back and forth between me, the CNC Supervisor, and the general manager, just to figure out the best way to manufacture the parts. Believe it or not, some folks actually learn something (with enough banging heads against the wall!). Pretty much now I get to do the parts/prototypes start to finish, and am responsible for the programming, setup, machining, etc... Yeah, there were kids in school that tried to design square drilled holes, etc, but I blame that on the education system. I've noticed when I started, much of the MechE schooling was theoretical, formulas, strictly numbers, and other non-real world issues. By the time I graduated (and pissed off a good 2/3's of the MechE dept because I wanted to machine & make all my designs, and wasn't satisfied with just paper calcs. Best part was when I managed to convince the faculty to give me a room to build my twin turbo Camaro senior design project uhh, where was I...) the curriculum had gottem much more hands on, having a basic machining workshop class as a requirement, a nice rapid prototyping area, etc... Anyways, having KBM will be a good thing if it gets the clueless engineers thinking about making the parts, rather than just making an unmanufacturable design. If they now have to think a little about how it gets machined, that can only help them give programmers better designs, with (hopefully) some more thought to how things actually get made.

 

Andris, back to making chips!

[P_Scott]

To All,

 

What I see is a flawed, fledgling, feature-based CAM system that was designed to apply some machining experience to simple STEP data files. Don't forget the quote "For large complex parts, it may take a long time for ST-Plan to complete this operation, so this may be a good time to go and get a cup of coffee." How long would it take for a part where it doesn't recognize any features? Indefinitely? Or how about this: "The system will not respond to input while it is working on each pass. This includes refreshing the screen if you activate and hide another application." So it won't let you work on anything else while it's scanning the features of this STEP part. What if you get an IGES or Parasolid file? IGES you're out of luck.

What about this: "Depending on how well ST-Plan is suited to your processes it may be necessary to correct some of the features. For example, for your tooling it may be necessary to reclassify a hole as a round pocket." So it can't adequately tell if your "hole" is a hole or not. You'd still have to tell it whether to drill it or pocket it out. What's the difference between that and choosing a Drill or Pocket toolpath in Mastercam and selecting the geometry? I don't see it as a great time savings. Just someone else's idea of trying to sell another CAM package. Of course my personal favorite in the internet demo of this product: "If a face is not associated with a feature then you have a problem." OK so I wouldn't be able to contour the edge at the bottom of a solid face that doesn't have any features (holes, slots, pockets, bosses...) attached to it. Where's the felxibility of choosing a single solid face to apply a contour to for roughing a corner on my stock? How about even facing off the top of part so it's flat and I can machine the rest of the geometry knowing all the tools are touched off from the same Z height? Maybe it's just me but I see a host of limitations with this system and not too much to make it worth my while to learn any more about it. Let Mastercam evolve further and learn about it's new functions and toolpaths. That's where the future of machining is going. It's gotten better with each new version and it will continue to do so because of the user feedback that CNC Software receives from this forum and reseller network. I'm not against change. Change is good. When it's good sense. JMHO

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

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I'm not against change. Change is good. When it's good sense. JMHO

---

Couldn'tve (is that even a word?) said it better myself.

 

[Noel]

It seems that things are the same all over.We are a fair sized mold shop and used to get our programs out of the office. When I took over the nc milling department I brought master cam in and now all of our programs are done on the shop floor.The level of scrap has declined to miniscule levels. If anyone wants to read a good book check out Skunk works.It cronicles the development of the U2, the sr71 and the stealth fighters.I cant remember his name but the head of the skunk works mandated the the engeneers who designed the parts worked no more than 3 meters from the guy building the part. That way each had an understanding of each others job and if changes nedded to be made they worked together on it. It sure is nice when everone works towards a common goal instead of fighting each other.Just my .02 cents.

 

 

Noel

[Zero]

quote:

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in fact, I could use a few more right now!!

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you should fly me out to cali charles ol buddy

[Charles Davis]

Looks like Peter nailed it in detail.

 

Exactly. That's why I think feature recognition and knowledge based tools should be part of a flexible CAM system that does not REQUIRE everything be feature-based.

 

That's also why I think some practical feature and knowledge based tools added to Mastercam's inherent power and flexibility would yield the most competitive programming tool possible.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

---

If anyone wants to read a good book check out Skunk works.It cronicles the development of the U2, the sr71 and the stealth fighters.I cant remember his name but the head of the skunk works mandated the the engeneers who designed the parts worked no more than 3 meters from the guy building the part. That way each had an understanding of each others job and if changes nedded to be made they worked together on it.

---

I believe the title it "Skunk Works". It was written by Ben Rich. Successor to Kelly Johnson - founder of the "Skunk Works". That is a fantastic book. Should be a "Must Read" for engineers. If you're into Aerospace lore this is a definite NUST read. I have it and have read it like 3 times. The first time, i got through it in about 2 days. I could not put it down.

[CAM-mando]

Successful companies will have Design Engineers and Mfg. People (internal or external) working together as early in the game as possible. It is much easier to be open minded when the design or project is still in the planning stages. When the drawings are done, material ordered schedules published and problems arise, things become difficult.

 

Good Engineers recognise their limitations and their strengths as do good programmers, machinist or toolmakers. They will welcome input from mfg. folks. They then can make informed decisions. We in manufacturing still may not like their decision, but at least it was informed.

[Fig sign]

I want to confess - I was engineer .

I ran the section for gears production in the motor factory and afterwards the prototype production (200 machines ) on the other factory before I repatriated to Israel .

We called this job technology engineer.

But I was not a desk type worker , rather a floor type man, alwais beside a machinist and worked with them all the time.

I only worked two month in some engineering section .

I recall the first time there I gave my technology to the floor and some one asked :

"Who is this @#$%^8 guy that wrote such a B@##$%^ ?"

I told :

" I am .Let`s look together what `s wrong "

And I agreed that it was a B@##$%^ and changed things.

Actually ,afterwards we became friends and this guy told that I was the first engineer EVER ,that was possibally to talk normal with ! "

I returned to our place and my boss told me :

Look ,my friend ,we have one principle here-

WE ARE NOT CONFESSING ABOUT OUR MISTAKES !

No wonder that after two month I was on the floor (production)section again.

I liked my job it was a real one and was hated by

those injeneerz cause I was making problems .

I was a realist and they dreamed some funny unreal things worth nothing.

There were many real engineers but it was hard for them too.

Engineering is not a science ,it is a skill and intuition,practical knowledge and inspiration.

It can not be a science simply because in any eguation you have 10 variables , getting from experience !

Engineering went not far from the bakery, for example !

I love to read books,but most of my knowledge I learned from people beside me and experience.

Now I am a machinist- programmer and I think that we are the real engineers(skill , intuition

and knowledge )!

The future is ours !

 

Iskander teh confessor !

 

[ 07-15-2003, 01:40 AM: Message edited by: plasttav ]

[skeetboy25]

you have to remember, soceity in general will allways defeat it's self on this kind of stuff.

 

remember papertape cnc? all those crank turners going to loose their jobs? well 30-40 years later you are still miraculously in work (sic).

 

How? ask this how much of your contacts are for 3d parts? how about 5 axis (or greater)? What were your tolerances then? Now?

 

Let manufacturing get more efficient, our society with it's demand for parts will just raise the par to where the thinking gets more challenging for us, and therein lies the fun.

 

As for the machine being "smart enough", ask yourself this, in several recent threads MC toolpathing ability has been praised by a majority of members, now who of you acctually ses the default speeds and feeds? (original default, not user)