MCPGMR, Exactly, I've already tried writing a post to reverse the two. I can't imagine what posting these files will be like. THX

quote: You could create a new wcs or just rotate the operation before you post. As far as setting mc to display Y axis as right to left I'm not sure if you can do it. That is exactly what I hope to do. I can't honestly believe somebody built a mill like this. What I would like to do is set mcam up so that it looks like normal top view but with x and y in each other's positions. problem is: it goes against the entire drafting world. I'll have to see if the machine is set so that all x values are negative? Wow. I need to think some more. THX fellas

A customer of mine has a new machine whose "across" orientation is known as "y" and whose along orientation is "x". Is there a way to set up mastercam to work for this? I have been playing with it for a while and can't seem to find anything. Thanks,

A valid point of course, betts, But the profit is where the money is. Profit and Taxes are what make the country we live in have a great economy. It's unfortunate that so many people are disgusted with the quality of american cars.

In regards to the other posts, here are some things that my family and I have put into place that help a great deal. You spend a few more bucks and sometimes a few more hours, but in the end those bucks and time spent become investments in your community. 1. Visit your farmer's markets. They need all the help they can get. Most times it's actually cheaper and the food is much better. 2. Go to a local butcher shop for meat. they cannot buy from overseas producers and have no cause to. an investment of a few cents per pound will go a long way toward fresh, clean livestock and healthy family members. 3. Bear in mind that even if you are buying a car made in america, the money may still be going overseas, even if it's built by american hands. 4. Local hardware stores carry an enormous amount of experienced men and women who have spent their lives working on problems people just like you are having around the house. Use this as an excuse to spend the extra bucks and go there instead of the depots. They can also tell you more about the area specific codes, regulations, and how to use their specific merchandise than the minimum wage sixteen year old kid trained to operate a cash register can. 5. for hand tools, buy Allen, USA. It's the only 100 % made in the usa tool there is. period. even their packaging comes from here in the US, and they're reasonably inexpensive; especially when compared to crapsman, snap-in-two, and matbroke tools. 6. tell your kids to read a book instead of playing that video game. They'll thank you when they are in the workplace and can focus instead of typing away at a computer game and not doing their job. 7. Place a higher importance on quality instead of quantity, maybe you get a jar with 75 pickle slices instead of twelve pounds, but I bet they taste better two years from now when you buy a new jar than the ones in the giant industrial tub hiding in the back of the fridge. these are just a couple of eye openers I like to think of whenever I'm tempted to go to wal-mart to save a few bucks.

People always say that unions are so bad. Yet no one complains about the concepts that we can thank unions for... Like the 40 hr. work week. Like affirmative action and welfare, unions are lately being seen as an archaic practice that are no longer necessary to afford the good people of this nation the rights and and pay they deserve. In reality, we can moan all we want to about how unions protect lazy people and put unreasonable regulations on employers (trust me, I've certainly got some examples of both cases myself). But as I said before, were it not for unions, the american laborer would have nothing but his or her own word and choices to protect them. What any complaintant about welfare, union or affirmative action truly needs is to focus on fixing the problems. It's an all too popular scenario we find ourselves in where a good Idea is seen to be falling into a position wherein people, those at least who do not appreciate the privileges they are granted, can take advantage of and lean on a concept which was put into place for their protection, thus fueling laziness and further loading those who work hard and appreciate their positions. It becomes an enless cycle of critical debate and an answer never gets found. The job of a union is to act as a mediator between employer and employee. Thus continually exerting effort endlessly to work for both the good of the company and the good of the common employee. when a union fails in this, by way of either playing favorites with it's governing employer or protecting workers who deserve to lose their job to a more worthy applicant, the union becomes a corrupt entity. This entity, like government, or law, or health care benifits, is not in need of abolishment, but rather, reform. You never get anwhere with and infected ear by cutting it off. We instead must view these situations as an opportunity to place focus on the problems and fix them. In other words, I see the plight of the american worker today and view a large portion of this position to be caused by laziness, same as any of the replies I've read on this. But the position taken by some to simply give up on the whole concept is not a valid option, and will never happen. As long as there are money driven people in this world, there will be people who need protection from them. People who have invested a large part of their lives working the crap jobs sweeping the factory floor only to get fired because a younger, stronger person will do the same job for two dollars an hour less. While I myself have never felt the benifits or costs of a union employment, I can testify on behalf of those I have known who needed a unions protection and didn't have it. I respect the outlook of gentlemen (or ladies) who bear similiar opinions to Rekd, but at the same time cannot justify or allow the process to be badmouthed because of some who give the whole concept a bad name. you simply cannot judge a practice on a few bad examples. It is of course the opinion of an already just and actively improving employer that employees do not need to unionize and that their trust and relationship with their own employees might deteriorate given unionization. In these cases unions don't have the necessity to be there. However, work for a company like wal mart who employs many many thousands of people and still offers benefits to less than a quarter of them Wal Mart's shady moves the concept of unionization is arguably necessary. We who work hard and have employers who treat us with respect and fan our flames to produce and to be efficient cannot see where a union could do any good. But we are not being taken for granted, as so many are. Once again, I am not a genius on the subject and will freely admit that any of this is purely subjective, so feel free to e-mail a reply. I would enjoy talking about it further after hours via home e-mail. [email protected] Thanks so much for the feedback.

I'll have to try that as well, how do you go about mapping keys in MCam?

There's always a screencap. when your part finishes varifying, hit "print screen" then go into MSPaint and hit Ctrl V. Save the file, then print it. it'll be a huge picture so you may have to re-size it. There may be another way, if you have a different CAD software, but I'll have to play around and see.

Hey Zero, Nice warlock.

Ro, I'm pretty new here as well, only on since this past February. Mastercam can be a lot to take in at first. But be confident. I programmed my first part within a week of starting. It helps if you know what not to do, like plunge a tool into a part at an ungodly feedrate. Just make sure you inquire about anything you don't already know, and don't be afraid to use the active help button to familiarize yourself with terms and parameters in mastercam you don't know about. Good luck with it, and take care.

As in any market dominated by concern not for it's own national prosperity but rather economic (which loosely translated into our new modern english means : monetary)growth, the current position of manufacturers and stockholders alike remains the same as it always has: Build it cheaper and you can sell it cheaper. Whether you are a fan of unions or not, the simple truth is that unionised labor makes way for simple human rights that keep stockholders and management from "killing off" the jobs of any number of happy, hard working lads and lasses to make a quick buck in the marketshare. There are downsides, of course, but if it is such an arbitrary and unpopular thing, why are so many third world countries finding their people uprising and asking for union style benefits in factories our country has moved overseas? Not to make a point about unions... as I have never worked for a union shop.. The real point of the topic appears to be what is the subject of american manufacturers moving more and more business overseas. For decades now, Ford and Chevrolet alike have been manufacturing cars in england, france, and Australia without a word of opposition. The claim has always been that it's a good thing for all involved. The overseas employees bring skills and design and a new market to be dabbled in, while the bulk of the profit comes right back here to the states into our american market. I personally am very frightened of the American marketplace, these days. The common man has painted himself into a corner by demanding higher paying jobs and a lower cost of living. We all want the best of both worlds. We want more time with the kids, while making more money so that we can pay for soccer and little league and get little johnny that new play station so that he won't feel left out at school. Meanwhile, we go to the same place every time to buy these things. Wal Mart, Sam's club, Meijer, big lots, home depot, lowes... All massive traders in the overseas market just dying to sell lots of asian made products to the american do it yourselfer at as little cost to him as possible. That same low price will come back to bite us when there are no american companies left to hire us, and no american farmers left to grow our own food and no american tradesmen left to keep working on the arms that keep America from being invaded by the very people who sold us those so-called low cost deals of the week. In closing, we had all better start paying attention. Responses are highly appreciated. I am not going to say that I'm right about everything, I'm not even going to say that I should be talking about this on the Mcam users forum, as it's not the right place for it. My personal e-mail for anyone who cares or would like to dicuss all of this at a different place is [email protected]. I would also like to appologise if anyone is offended by the afforementioned text, but seriously folks, this is our own backyard we're talking about

Awesome! I spent eight weeks in selangor last year, at Shah Alam. I was doing some work at UniSel (University of Selangor). So nice to meet a fellow from thereabout. I was a field tech for a company that sells educational training equipment for industrial trainees, my duties included going to malaysia for their installs. I spent some time in petaling as well, working at the malaysian institute of aviation technology (MIAT). Maybe you've heard of these? I'm sorry I'm off topic but I'm excited to meet you, sir.

I was fortunate in that one of my first tasks when I came on board at Eastech was to become the local art Guru. It's been a great deal of fun. I wish the tool paths had rough and finish cuts like surfaces, but it's really no problem for me to have to different posted files. I'll have to pick up some of that mirror aluminum. It would come in handy with a project I'm working on for mother's day. Thanks for the tip.

Yogesh, Whereabouts in malaysia are you from? NB

I've seen problems like this one a lot with art. There are a few bugs I've been logging: If you are bringing in a BMP, if the file is too large or if you set the resolution too high it will kick you out. Art is a massive memory hog. I especially have problems with toolpaths. Some things you might try: re-size the image using a photo editor and then bring it back into paint and convert to BMP. You can then create your canvas any size you want, but the problem will be gone. My theory is that the problem occurs in reading the bitmap when it's too large. I've had the same problem in Rast2Vec when using the Background BMP when that file is too large. Are you running MR0105?

Sorry, Didn't realize the pic had all that white.

Yup. Did you engrave those? I've been spending a lot of time with ART recently. For those who like to play, it's a lot of fun. Here's a file I'm working on for my S.H.

This was for a keg spigot handle for New albany brewing co. Thanks, Shady. I never did anything like that before. Here are a few more I've played with : If you see your logo here, please don't sue me some easy tools for anyone who has to find a company's logo or re-create one Free Logo EPS Files Free True Type and Mac Fonts This is one of my fav's...

Thad, Observation well noted. Only thinkable response: I've definitely been impressed so far. Can't say I've had any problems, anyway. The forum itself is a he** of an Idea. As for me... Still a newbie.

Shady, How did you put that screen cap in your post? did you post it online and then insert the link?

The User is in india? He's prolly sent that e-mail to a number of names he found over the web +1 to google, always helpful... Here at Eastech we use the manuals marketed by the third party co. In-House solutions. I've been teaching with them myself for six months now and for 9.1 users I think it's a pretty good start. The assumption is correct, though, that a non-machinist would probably have trouble understanding mastercam from the start. Especially a 3-d cad engineer. NuNu gives a good recommendation. However, If that's not available, the in-house manuals seem to do pretty well, even if you don't know what an end -mill is.

Thanks, fellas. I found a post for an LX2 on our system here at E.T. , which should work. At least, I haven't heard anything from the customer. Thanks a million though, for the support. I really appreciate it.

Readers, Please disregard this post. I am a new user and as such do not yet know the "faux pas" side of the forum. Perhaps adding a request within the Forum guidelines, which I read before posting my first post, would be helpful in preventing blunders like this one from giving new users, like myself, a bad reputation from the start. In addition, Please excuse any overstepping of boundries found within this or any of my posts to date. In any of those possible cases, I can guarantee that my interests lie only in best serving Mastercam Customers. Especially in this particular case, wherein I had requested information on finding a post in order to help a client, as I am an employee of mastercam's Kentucky reseller, Eastech. Again, My most humble appologies for the error. It won't happen again. Thanks

I need a post for a prototrak VL 1840V lathe controller. Anybody Know where I can get one? Thanks

I agree. Relying on data buffers and magnetic film just doesn't do it for me. It's just too affordable these days to go with digital memory devices. In Mastercam, I never work from a floppy. It's bad practice, in my opinion, to rely on data buffers and slow writing techniques when not necessary. Bear in mind though, the older, DOS based versions were designed to work from floppies. In newer versions, a great deal of users utilizing 3-D mill can't even fit their files on floppies. Even NC Files are getting too big. Still though, I think it was probably an operator error. ThX