programming a family of parts

[BenzB]

In a former life I used a cam system that allowed the use of variables that were driven by variable tables and/or macros to speed the programming of parts that were in a family. Say a family of parts that are all the same except for overall length. Is any of this possible in Mastercam? How do others accomplish this with efficiency?

 

Thanks for your time.

Have a wonderful day

[crazy^millman]

In Basic Mastercam not possible that way. There are methods, but not like you are used to. With Mastercam for Solidworks I do think there is a way to do it like you are used to, but you will have to have Solidworks to accomplish it.

[gcode]

In a former life I used a cam system that allowed the use of variables that were driven by variable tables and/or macros to speed the programming of parts that were in a family. Say a family of parts that are all the same except for overall length. Is any of this possible in Mastercam? How do others accomplish this with efficiency?

 

Thanks for your time.

Have a wonderful day

You can do this in Mastercam for SolidWorks

Use a design table to build your model , then toolpath in MCfSW

[JoshC]

As others have mentioned MCFSW will make that easy...

 

Mastercams full version is still assosiative though, so is you toolpath off a solid, you should be able to use model prep move and model prep push-pull to alter the model and update paths. This wouldnt be a table obviously, but you could post code, model prep the part, Save a new file name then regen the operations and re-post.

 

I hope that makes sense.

[AMCNitro]

If the parts a similar shouldn't you be able have them on different levels on the same file?  That way if you program one all you have to do for the rest is just select geometry.

[jlw™]

If the parts a similar shouldn't you be able have them on different levels on the same file? That way if you program one all you have to do for the rest is just select geometry.

This is how I do it. Keep it all in one file. New Toolpath group for every part.

[THEE THAINZ™]

I do close to the same but instead I either delete the old geometry, import the new and keep the tools or import the tools into a new file. Personally I prefer to delete the old geometry this way you keep your levels view and groups the same throughout the family. Just make sure you tie the part number to the files for ease of access.

[jfich]

You can export the tool path then Import it in to the new file.

 

I make a lot of a vacuum holding fixtures that mount to risers with the vacuum port running through the risers. So all of the bases to the tools are the same. So I have a couple different tool paths exported and import the one I need.

[Machineguy]

Do the parts in Solidworks. You can make a excel table to drive the dimensions.

Then bring each part in on a different level that's named for that size.

 

Now you can pgm as stated above.

 

Machineguy

[FROZEN]

What about feature base machining? I thought that was designed for family parts.