I was wondering if MC was able to control feedrates at different Z levels within an operation such as surface finish contour.

We use SW and MC latest versions and have the mc solids package. Have tried to use the mcdirect for Solidworks, but have not had much success. The feature tree is always missing items. If MC was able to link to a SW file and update when the SW file changed, it would be too good. In the mean time, we save our SW files as .x_t files with the coordinate system for the correct CNC. In SW, when you save as parasolids you can select which coordinate system to use. With the MC solids you can import as a solid feature rather surfaces. Solids are much easier and safer to work with for toolpath creation.

optical intellimouse is only way to go... tried wireless trackball mouse and sent back... great for rotating part, but that is about it.

My inserts didn't last but .250 deep with 100ipm @ 1000RPM with .02 doc. I am now running 25ipm @ 400RPM and doing ok so far with .02 doc, but program runtime is forever long. .12 doc seems deep, but to get program length down I need to try.

New to machining tool steels (H13, 4140, S7...) with new Okuma 15000 RPM VMC. I have a block of H13 that I need to rough in with a 3" RPG mill .25 corner radius. I'm currently using a 3D pocket @ .02 doc. Feedrate is 100 ipm @ 1000 RPM. Does anyone have a good formula to calculate speeds and feeds that involves depth and width of cut? Also, I want to run a finish contour toolpath over a shape with a .062 ball endmill using .001 doc and .015 woc. Any suggestions on feed and speed? Thanks

Thanks for all the input. It sounds like I learned the hard way. I did use verify, but only after it was too late... my bad. I would like to get the right tooling for the job. I have a 12" x 12" x 5" block of H13 that I need to mill a Ø6" contour about 1.5" deep. I tried using the 2" face mill to hog a large portion of the outer steel away, but obviously that didn't work out. It sounds like a bull mill is favored for roughing jobs. Any other recommendations?

Today I used a 2" face mill cutter with a 45° lead to do a surface rough pocket. I left .03 stock on drive surfaces for a 3/4" endmill to clean up with a finish contour. The problem I had is that the face mill wiped out a large portion of finished piece even though I left .03 on all stock surfaces. The 3/4" endmill didn't touch any surfaces. Now I have a freakin 100 lb. boat anchor. I double checked my cutter parameters and they all checked out ok. Has anyone experienced a similar problem and know of a fix? Please help.

I found that my char length and parity have to be different when sending to the OKK machine. At the PC I have 7-2-E and at the machine I have 8-2-O. Has anyone ever needed to do this? I am still losing characters when trying to drip feed. Does this have to do with the DC code?

Does anyone know what DC-2 or DC-4 settings are? Do I need to have them setup when sending through RS232?

The OKK is 20 yrs+ old. The hard drive can handle up to a whopping 17kb. The RS232 cable is only about 20 feet max, so I don't think that is the problem. I tried to use Hyperterminal to drip feed, but kept getting errors from characters being dropped out. A few versions ago in Mastercam, we were able to use the supplied editor to drip feed to the machine. I'm not sure which editor or version it was. If anyone knows of this, let me know. Thanks

Having trouble communicating with our OKK machine. Recently tried to drip feed, but was unsuccessful and now can't even send to the machine. Please help. Below are the parameters of the OKK: 1 Device Name 2 Baud Rate 3 Stop Bit 4 Parity Effective 5 Even Parity 6 Chr. Length 7 Terminator Type 8 Terminator Code 1 9 Terminator Code 2 10 Rewind Code 11 Handshake 12 DC Code Parity I made sure all parameters match the dnc settings, but I keep getting errors. Is anyone familiar with these parameters? I know the Baud rate(4800), stop bits(2), and parity(even), but that is the extent.

How do i disable OpenGL and directx vsyching?

I turned down the hardware 2 notchs, but that didn't help any either. Is there anything else I can try. The part rotates so slow that I have a hard time working on it. Is there any settings in Mastercam?

"What is the 128mb video card?" NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 I looked through the forum and found a lot about ram allocation, but adjusting these settings didn't help much for my problem.

I recently got a new computer for mastercam that I thought would have plenty of HP... 2.0 P4 1 gig RAM 128 mb video ...Everyhting was fine until I had to run toolpaths on a detailed part. Just to rotate the part seemed like my computer was starving. When I go to select surfaces in the geometry of the toolpath it takes a couple of seconds to highlight under the mouse. The mastercam file is only 5 meg. Does anyone have a solution to this problem?

I'm looking to drip feed a mastercam .nc file to our cnc from a computer on our network that doesn't have mastercam installed on it. Does anyone know if this is possible and if there is a stand alone program that can transfer the file with drip feed. thanks

thanks, it worked

I am using Mastercam v8 with an old OKK cnc mill. The post processor that I am using does not produce the correct line of code for a canned tap cycle. The post has the following: ptap # Canned Tap Cycle pdrillref n, drillref, sgdrill, *x, *y, *depth, *refht, pdwell, *frplunge, e ... and produces: G99G84X-1.125Y-.625Z-.5R.1F1. I need the line to have the # of threads at the end of the line of code. for example: G99G84X-1.125Y-.625Z-.5R.1F1.E13 for 1/2-13 tap. How can I do this?... it has to be be something simple that I am not seeing. Thanks

I'm having problems posting a nci file that is 50 meg. I have been able to post files that were between 30 and 40, but mastercam does not want to finish my post at 50. Does anyone know why this is? My machine has 500 ram and 5 gig HD and 600mhz processor.