cut.tmp fills up the hard drive

[The IT Guy]

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for technical issues... Using the latest version of MasterCam 2017 we ran in to a strange bug. Normally, on this PC, regenerating a tool path is instantaneous. When setting the Z height of, the clearance plane above, a helix to zero the regenerate function hangs in an endless loop. If you let it run the Hard Drive slowly fills up until the computer crashes. The space is filled mostly by one file called "cut.tmp" in a local MasterCam cache directory. This one file is hundreds of gigabytes, limited only by the size of your partition. The folder name itself is gibberish.

Has anyone seen runaway temp files like this before?

Edited June 27, 2017 by The IT Guy
I wasn't specific about what value was being set to zero

[Guest]

I am wondering why a helix would be set to 0

Seems like a bad setting IHO

 

 

[nickbe10]

This a classic "no solution" response from MC. It does the same thing if you try and mill a slot on 2 side chains with a cutter the exact slot width, the system is trying to work it out but can't, even though there is nothing inherently wrong with the toolpath which might generate an error message.

So I believe Mr. Paris is right. Try some different numbers and it should become obvious....

[The IT Guy]

1 hour ago, JParis said:

I am wondering why a helix would be set to 0

Seems like a bad setting IHO

 

 

Sorry, I mistyped. I meant to say when the Z clearance above a helix toolpath is set to zero. Not the helix itself. It can be set to a very small number but setting the clearance to zero causes some terrible error that MasterCam can't recover from. If it can't do it I do believe it should generate an error instead of filling the hard drive with temp files.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, The IT Guy said:

Sorry, I mistyped. I meant to say when the Z clearance above a helix toolpath is set to zero. Not the helix itself. It can be set to a very small number but setting the clearance to zero causes some terrible error that MasterCam can't recover from. If it can't do it I do believe it should generate an error instead of filling the hard drive with temp files.

Well, you might think it should, as do I, evidently, it does not though....

I would be curious as to when setting a Clearance value to zero is appropriate...that is supposed to be the control height at the start/end of a path....

[The IT Guy]

Yes, I believe it was the start of the path. I am not looking at it anymore. He set it to a very small number and moved on but I'm not happy with a software that smashes the hard drive with temp files like this every time it has an error.

[Ocean Lacky™]

14 hours ago, JParis said:

Well, you might think it should, as do I, evidently, it does not though....

I would be curious as to when setting a Clearance value to zero is appropriate...that is supposed to be the control height at the start/end of a path....

When stock has been removed and "Z0" is now theoretical.  Or, when working off the bottom of a part because of it's relationship to another part.