Seems I'm rather late. Anyway, you can unfold any surface(s) in RHINO provided that the surface(s) are linear in one direction. Very easy and fast. You can download an evaluation version with 25 save limit at www.rhino3d.com . HTH

You can order a demo CD. IMO it's the best artwork CAM package, but I heard the price is too high. Something around 7k$. quote: So does Mastercam have a C-Hook that simulates the same ArtCam sculpturing techniques? Probably not and never it will have. You can find some of its functionalities in MC but ArtCAM was designed specifically for artwork, making/editing relief or even STL from any 2d and combining them to any surface which can then be roughed/finished in it. HTH

Thanks Kevin Clark, Actually we can export our surface models as ACIS or Parasolid . But there's no option to import Parasolid or ACIS . We have problems importing some of our SolidWorks parts to Rhino ( using IGES ). If you know how to import X_T or SAT or if you're using a 3rd party addon , please inform us. We need it seriously. Thanks in advance kevin Wolf

quote: Rhino will also import/export parasolids if you have Solids in Mastercam. There's no option to import Parasolid/ACIS to it. Maybe you're using an addon in Rhino?

quote: Correct! Because of this the tool path must be offseted Remember the tool is offset and the toolpath is created on original surfaces then the toolpath is moved in z direction by a certain amount which equals to stock to leave. There's only and only one configuration that this algorithm won't work and this config is when negative stock is greater then tip radius. Because offsetting a tip radius inside with a value greater than tip radius produces a self intersecting geometry. Be sure none of the popular CAMs offsets the surface nor the toolpath. I asked a colleague using PowerMILL( a very powerful CAM) about this and he said PowerMILL can't machine trode with negaive stock using End-Mill either. HTH

quote: What I think is that to implement it MC must change the algorithm of tool path generation. It can be IMHO smthn like to build toolpath for tool with surface offset 0 and to use algorithm like shelling to get it offseted . Let us S="stock to leave". IMHO for positive stock it offsets the tool to outside by S and calculates the toolpath then move up the toolpath by S to compensate for real smaller cutter. It offsets the tool to inside by S and calculates the toolpath then move down by S to compensate for reeal bigger cutter. This way there's no need to calculate offset of surfaces but has this disadvantage that it fails for negative stock with End_mill cutter.

I think the amount of gouge is maximum on a surface where the slope angle is 45 degrees. This amount is 0.41x(stock to leave). The minimum gouge amount which is zero occurs in vertical and horizontal surfaces. This is due to algorithm when using negative stock with an End-Mill cutter. The minimum tip radius which produces gouge-free toolpath equals to stock to leave value. It's better if MC allows us to use it on surfaces, since there are times when we want to use it on Horiz/Vert surfaces.

Dr Olds, You can have Blend option in Project toolpath with the lastest patch for version 8.1.1 . HTH

It worked today. We made it with CIMCO DNC-Max. It worked in DNC local mode. Thanks everyone especially Anthony and Ying

Thanks Ying and Anthony, I will test above codes tomorrow and let you know.

Thanks Ying and Anthony. I'll try new parameters and will inform you.

Nice result for Athlon. BTW are other parameters such as allocated RAM the same on both machines?

There are 2 DNC modes (drip feed) available at controller. LOCAL DNC( Operator Init.) and External DNC( Host Init.) I set controller to either of these modes and pressed start cycle but nothing happened. What did I miss? Any restriction on filename? What charatcters or stringd should be at start and end of file? Other options for data transfer of small files, are simple upload/download which we're using now.

Hi, Thanks for replies. We're using standard cable with hardware handshake. Baud 9600-7-E-1 and using Deckel dialog 11 template. Our problem is there's no place to select file and send it to machine. What's the procedure to send files to this controller?

Hi, Anyone using DNC-MAX, or any other software, for drip feeding to Deckel Dialog 11 control (LSV2)? We read on-line help of DNC-Max but can't figure it out how to do it. Sorry I think I posted this in the past. Thanks in advance

Thanks Paul

cadcam, Did you mean OEM version of MetaCUT Utilities has DNC capabilities? I downloaded a trial version but could not find any DNC stuff. Thanks in advance

First of all use AUDIT command to see ifit has any error. You can convert your solid part to surface in MDT using the AM2SF command. Or by twice using EXPLODE command you can get surfaces. Then export it to MC as surfaces. HTH

Yes, I use it after any toolpath creation to check for both gouge and collision.

Happy 3rd anniversary. I'd like to thank webby for providing us such a cool place and apprreciate all members for sharing their knowledge and information. Great Forum, Great People

Sometimes AUDIT or PURGE in ACAD helps.

There are several machines. Most of them are old machines back to 85-91: The controllers are, Dialog 11/Heidenhain 155/Mitsubishi Meldas M64.

Hi everybody, What's the best way, in your opinion, to find the max acceleration/deceleration of a 3 axis milling machine ? Re-running a previous program (which is an arc toolpath in 3 standard planes) with higher feed rates untill hearing gouge is what Mastercam Help suggests to find max safe feed rate (or max safe acceleration). But with different arc radius we got several different acceleration number. So we don't know exactly what the correct acc is. Do you use another method? And please tell me details , for example the exact geometry you use. Thanks in advance

We're using GF3 Ti200/128 MB with the same problem. Should I dump it too?

Thanks for reply, I'm having problems in GF3 too. Is GF3 like GF4 MX ? I think GF3 including (GF3 Ti200/GF3/GF3 Ti500) are the same except the speed in chip and vram. I don't change any display settings while gfx/cad/cam applications are running. The first acceleration level without this problem is level-1 (disable all but basic accelerations). Also changing color depth to 16-bit doesn't fix it. [ 01-21-2003, 06:24 PM: Message edited by: kwolf ]