That's what I was thinking too. But the night guy swear he's not hittin that button. and this person is pretty reliable. but even then when I hit that button it doesn't put every single toolbar on it's own line. it just rearranges the ones that are too long. (which BTW I think this issue should be fixed, no other windows based application does this) but I still think there is something else going on

From time to time my toolbars are realligning themselves by putting each individual toolbar on it's own line. Making my graphics window a fraction of it's normal size. I've never seen it happen. But if I leave it open at night and come in, in the morning it's like that. There's one guy here at night that get's on my computer but he doesn't know why it's happening either or what he'd be doing to cause it. the closest thing I can do to duplicate it is to hit the button next to the red X. that chanes them to some degree but not as drastically as what I'm getting. Anybody know the cause and is there a way to lock them down to keep from moving?

DC the quick fix for that is to copy the geo again and it will ask again to maintain depths. Just say no this time and the depth field will not be grayed out anymore

Has any used Mastercut endmills. We've been using YG and really like them, but they come from Korea. The mastercut endmills are American and supposedly cheaper. Just wondering how they hold up. We use the TiaLN coating on tool steel.

funny screen name. I love it.

I've had the same problem as SLJ too. some reversed and some in random order. but it happened when I cut and pasted.

Billh, If you click the "create new operations and Geometry" button that gives you an identical path on mirrored geo. is that what you meant when you said? quote: Work around? Saving ops and regenerating on the mirrored object is what I usually have to do.

I want it to in the worst way. I was just trying to give Mayday a work around till we get the real thing.

Sometimes I make an STL file from my solid model and use that stl file in restmill for my stock. You can translate it or rotate it. It seems that if your machining castings this would be extremely useful. All you have to do is translate the stl file up the amount of your machine stock and put a restmill path to it.

I've learned to give the operators what they want. I got run out on a rail one time when I was younger for butting heads with some operators who were doing some pretty funky old school type things. The boss told me he wanted to bring his shop up to date. But that's not what everyone else wanted I guess. I use wear but if an operator wanted it the other way I'd do it. But you'll have to explain to someone why verifing your program is different. I'm running my own cnc department now and I can't wait for those operators to come back to me looking for a job

On our 4020, we had a problem with that too. It actually had a tool in the spindle but I was getting the same alarm. It turned out to be a metal chip that had gotten in the enclosure and landed on the sensor that tells it whether there is a tool in the spindle or not.

DNC- direct numeric control (aka drip feed)

shoulda searched first. thanks, John

dr slayer, you've got mail

I wish that when you pick "entites" in the drilling geometry, that it made no difference if the arc is closed or not. why would you drill at the endpoint of an arc? That seems like a rare thing compared to drilling at the center of an arc. The problem is sometimes the arcs look like circles but are not. Am I alone in this or do others wish it was changed?

I worked for a place like that too. and got stuck there for 9 long months because of insurance reasons. That place would actually go buy some pretty nice equipment from time to time. And then skimp on the things that made it do what it needed to do. Like buying 3 new cnc's and using version 2 smartcam with no surface capabilities. They bought a 250,000 wire and bought Bobcam to program it. And they also used HSS endmills to cut toolsteel because they thought carbide cost too much. I couldn't get out of that place fast enough. I learned a lot from that place. Like how to make something with nothing. But I wouldn't go back. I couldn't be happier now.

16??

the usual average price is about 2/3 of what 1/2 of the top 90% pay

quote: I could ramble on and on Are you sure about that?

quote: I might be grasping at straws, but there's just something about the X interface that I'm trying to pin down. I feel like my eyes are constantly "scanning" all over the screen for information.. this sums it up for me too. And I asked my reseller about opening up multiple windows in X before it came out and he said nobody has ever asked for that, that he knew of. Good to see I'm not alone in this. I'm one programmer, programming multiple machines. Everytime there is a question it's either open up another window of X (really slow) or quit what I'm doing and open up another file, answer a question then close and reopen orignal file. In realestate they say there are only 3 things that are important.---Location, Location and Location. In Cam software there are only 3 things also--time, time, and time.

Whatever you end up with--give us small guys the option of leaving it just like it is. Karl Oram has put a lot of well repsected thought into this, but those process and "checks and balances" would be extreme overkill in a small tooling shop.

HaroldM, If you are a good programmer on verticals you won't have any problem on horizontals. As far as programming goes, there isn't that much of a difference. X, Y and Z are still the same. Some horizontal mills have a retractable spindle that is a W axis. But in my experience this has mostly been handled with the post. The biggest difference for a programmer will probably be in the spindle speeds, horsepower and amount of stock you can take with each pass. HTH

ahh man, I feel dumb now. Thanks guys

I'm wondering why I have to regen all solids. why can't we just regen the dirty solids. The help file actually says that's what "regen all" does but if you click it when you have no dirty solids it takes the same amount of time as though they were all dirty. Since there are no Solid assemblies in Mastercam I compensate by modeling several things into one MCX file. It's a pain regenerating everything when there is a problem with one small solid.