As stated before, it will destroy any water soluble coolant, causing it to separate and become worthless. Plan on draining your tank & putting new coolant in every couple of weeks. There are some makes of coolant which supposedly tolerates the magnesium better, but I have yet to try. We have a reoccurring job once a year that runs for about a month, we add in a couple of days of cleaning and a new drum of coolant into the cost of the job. You gotta get all the magnesium out of the machine or you will be fighting coolant issues till you do. The fire hazard is a real thing. One of the few jobs in the shop where we do not run lights out.

You can easily start a fire which burns through the bottom of your machine, and continues burning through the concrete, until all the magnesium is consumed in the fire. Fire suppression is a good hedge against risk, but fire prevention is much more important. A Class "D" extinguisher may save the fire from spreading to your entire shop, but it may not save the machine. I worked at a shop which occasionally would build parts from large magnesium casting. These are machined on open-bed Deckel CNC machines (before the merger), and the orders were to "sweep up all the chips/swarf after each and every cut, and transfer the chips to the chip barrel outside, at the far end of the parking lot". Letting the magnesium chips build up and/or moving on to other operations/work before cleaning up the fire hazard, was a terminable offense. When I was young, I thought this was overkill. With the benefit of experience comes wisdom, and now I completely understand and agree with the need for these rules!

Heavier finish passes. You don't want thin chips. Like Ron said, no dull tools. Don't leave machine unattended. Make sure you're not piling up chips inside the machine to mitigate issues should a fire start. Water based coolant seems to oxidize the xxxx out of it. Keep that in mind. Preferrable to run straight oil. If this is a machine that you run water based coolant in you'll destroy the coolant pretty quickly as the magnesium causes the hardness to skyrocket and the emulsifiers decide to go home (coolant splits.) Other than that can't think of much. I've machined a fair bit of it without issue.

Buckets of sand also. No dull tools and watch for heat in the cut

Taking a shot in the dark here, but it sounds like your post was designed with and option to have an M01 OR M00 at the end of a tool. If so, the misc value you're setting will only have an effect with force tool change on, or if the operation is the last operation for that tool. +1 to putting M00 in a manual entry

Not sure why your machine didn't respect the M00... That said, I usually do something like this with a Manual entry between operations as the M00 will stop the spindle, so in the manual entry you can restart it...

I've only ever run it dry or with cutting oil and NEVER unattended. If at all possible I highly suggest cutting oil as opposed to coolant. Cutting it with water-based coolant creates hydrogen gas which can be explosive in enclosed areas. Class D Fire extinguisher and sand on hand FTW JM2CFWIW

I think they are called halon fire extinguishers also keep buckets of sand near by rigorous chip control is required. clean the chips out constantly. fine stringers are particularly dangerous.

100% this! When I teach my multiaxis classes (just did one this morning), I always start with this: Why do you use Multiaxis toolpaths? #1 reason - it looks badass and it makes you look cooler when it comes time for the raise! You paid for the machine, use it all! #2 reason - to avoid hitting the part/machine/fixture. #3 reason - to use the shortest tool possible. I totally agree with Kyle that 90%+ is really just 3+2. And of the remaining 10%, 75% of THAT can be covered with the steps I show in the video above. It's that last 2.5% that can get REeeeeaaaalllll tricky, though Good luck on the interview!

We spent north of a quarter million setting this place up with Predator about 5 years ago. I tried to get them to talk to Cimco, but the deal was already done. The Cimco rep got a courtesy meeting and was shown the door. The implementation was 50+ machines ranging from 40 years old to modern Fanuc and Okuma controls. Many are ethernet to RS232 , newer ones are ethernet and a few are wireless. This is a public forum and I'm not going to post my opinions on the system here, other than to say the rollout was painful and remains so to this day. My advice is to get a copy of the operator's manual for both systems and spend some time with them.

No one can give you answer....that's kind of the point...his situation is different than yours

Assuming no hardware issues on your end, rarely, We had a switch go belly up one time after a thunder storm....at that time we were about an hour away from their local facility, we had a replacement that afternoon to use until our new unit came in... Though if you HAVE to make that call for some reason, you need someone to actually pick it up.... It's kind of like insurance....you don't want to ever have to use your insurance but you pay for it, just in case....

Cimco support is unmatched...the software just works. The interface is easy and adaptable and easily expandable. I am looking to add DNC early next year, who is coming in, Cimco, period. I don't need to look at anything else. My long experience as a user and on the support side tell me it's the way to go.

Nope seen this many times and told around 2075 it will be addressed.

We used to light up a handful of chips on the cement loading dock. It gets the cement so hot it explodes leaving golf ball sized divots in the cement. That's not real bright from a safety standpoint, but it was tons of fun. There's lots of video on youTube of machine tools burned out by magnesium fires.

Another fun thing is to bring home a bag of chips to throw in the bon fire for the kids. Especially fun in the winter with snow. Throw snow on top of the burning magnesium and it goes insane.

Absolutely run it in a machine you hate