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[rchipper]

Greetings,

I am excited to be enrolling in the Mastercam training classes, Yahoo. Until then would someone be able to help me? I have a part that I need to drill 3000, .032 diameter holes, .063 thru and countersink them to .125 dia x 100 deg. there is also 400 .125 diameter holes thru. Is there a method of doing this without digitizing thousands of center points. Which brings up another question, the file I was given is all surfaces, how can I put points at all of the centers, which are not all in even lines or is that nec.? The file is quite large and bogs down my computer so I was able to extract the hole edges without the surfaces but realized FBM Drilling will not recognize the part without the surfaces.

 

Thank you for any suggestions,

rchipper

[drafting3]

obviously you'll want some of the other veterans here to reply, but when selecting geometry for a drill toolpath, a "drill point selection" dialog box will pop up. (in x2 mr2 anyways)

 

select "entities" and that will let you select circles instead of points. (you can select a window of circles if you'd like) mastercam will automatically select the center point of those circles.

[RaiderX]

Verisurf hole axis rocks for this. you will find free download on this forum. keep in mind if you make different color points that represent there size it is easier to filter when selecting.

 

welcome to the world of Mcam

its not just a job its an adventure.

[drafting3]

here is a screen cap of the point selection window. to select these 4 circles, i simply clicked "entities" in the dialog box, then selected a window around the circles. mastercam automatically selected their center points.

[rchipper]

Wow this rocks. Glad to step up to Mastercam. Adventure is my middle name.

 

Thank you,

rchipper

[rchipper]

Now would this work for dif. size circles, for example if I have various holes with counterbores that I would like to interpolate. Is placing a circle at the center of another as easy? sorry, I guess I should not get so excited and try it for myself.

[Jayson Kramer]

you would use Circle Mill option then Chpper.

[Thad]

I use contour with the ramp option selected for c'bored holes. Make sure you have "perform finish pass at final depth" checked.

 

The downfall to using it in your situation is the number of c'bores since they require chaining. That would take a while. Sounds like circle mill might be the way to go if you have thousands of c'bores to select.

 

Thad

[gcode]

if you use helix mill, from the circle mill menu and select enities ( arc circles) instead of points,

you can machine differnt sizes of holes with one toolpath.

[mkd]

with that many holes, wouldn't a custom form tool be a good way to go. drill and counterbore/csk in one shot.

there may actually be an off the self cutter for this.

[Todd Mann from Fastech]

When you are selecting your cicrles in the chaining dialog window select mask an arc, click on the arc like the .032 then press enter, then up in the task bar click on all arcs then hit enter it should select only the .032 arcs!

[rchipper]

I really want to thank everyone for the input. You are great.

 

rchipper.