WOW! This guy is old enough to be heading a team of scientists in 1942 working on war effort projects and is awarded National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2010!

I have a 3.600 diameter boring bar I am using 11.5" deep in a part. I have a face that is 10.5" deep that I need cleaned up to 4.05" dia to allow for the 100mm undercut tool to machine the undercut at that depth. I couldn't just run the 100mm undercut tool to depth because it was going to crash the center of the tool. I couldn't see spending $4k to build something on one part just to clean up the face. Been years since I have done this, but I just took the boring bar and used circle mill helix .005 per pass from the 3.6 to the 4.05 and go from there. Not sure how many every used the old school auto facers where they would hit a rod or you grabbed a knurled drive ring by hand and then scroll out the tool to a set diameter, but it is kind of the same principle expect I am making the boring bar into a big inserted milling tool.

That's because Mastercam is priceless . Gracjan

I currently work in a full on Mazak shop. 24 machines and 20 are Mazak. I get so tired of hearing how great Mazatrol is. Mazatrol is great for SIMPLE parts. You can do a lot with Mazatrol but it requires standing at the machine or using the quite expensive off-line software from Mazak. Yes, I will do quick little projects of my own at the panel when I only need to poke one hole or mill a face. While Smooth brings trochoidal milling to the table it's still just as limited to 2.5axis machining. Mazatrol lathe is pretty decent but it also has it's limits. Put a groove on a taper so that the grove is normal to the taper. Not happening. If it were that great I wouldn't have a job using Mastercam in a shop where the owner thinks Mazatrol is better than CAM software. It's all I hear all the time, Mazatrol, Mazatrol, Mazatrol... hey, can you program this right quick?

Trouble is, if you're employed to do a job, to the best of your ability, and chit is being presented, and worst of all you get asked what do you think, well... You're not doing your job right if you don't tell them. Afterall, you're a paid professional. I've fallen foul 4 or 5 times in this situation, but I have a mate who is well up the chain in CW, and he will say it as it is and everyone loves him. He says it laughing, with a happy smile, but most importantly genuinely with no malice. I think that's the art of it - if you growl and spit it out telling them they don't know their arse from their elbows, it doesn't go down so well