What??????

Did you ride the short bus to school or have you been huffing layout die?

Even so you would still be better turning it off since Hyperthreading limits your CPU usage to 50%. I run two Windows of Mastercam all the time without any memory issues.

I only use Lathe ocassionally, but I think if you go to your tool definition into "set up tool" you can change your Turret position, active spindle, spindle rotation, and reverse tool to get things working correctly.

I would use Contour instead of pocket. You could create a small lead in and out if you needed also. To save time you can create 1 contour operation then drag all of the geometry from your pocket opperation to your contour operation and regenerate it.

Does anyone know if Mastercam direct for solidworks will name the Mastercam levels the same name as the partname? I import alot of Solidworks files as Parasolid, But I always have to rename all the parts in Mastercam. It gets really old when I continually deal with 100 or more levels in a assembly.

Just Curious... Does professionalism involve spelling words correctly?

I mentioned this to Mark Summers (Mr. Mastercam) from CNC systems at a X demo they held at our reseller. He said they were looking into changing the format of the chaining dialgue box. I told him I wanted the "R" hotkey back for this funcion. He seemed to agree with me, But I encourage everyone to email them and let them know you miss it.

Always remember......

It's easier to be a critic than a coach.

I have a Mitsubishi mill at home and I bought a rotary phase converter on ebay. It works flawlessly. FYI, you will need one rated for two times your spindle HP.

We have dells in the shop and in engineering. You should always turn off the hyper threading when using mastercam or solidworks. It might work well when your running other types of programs, but not CAD/Cam stuff.

After speaking with a service person at leadwell (He didn't have any specific info)... He did tell me that in order to DNC The control should be able to both send and recieve programs. After checking and I found that cant send them from the control. I'll have to take a closer look at the cable I Guess.

Thanks but my program doesn't have line numbers. It seems as though my PC isnt getting the stop signal after the control reaches the buffer limit. The machine doesn't even start running and I get a overload error.

I have a Leadwell VMC with a Meldas 50 control that I bought used. The original owner never had a program that exceeded 50K, But I do. I am able to send programs into the memory but am having trouble DNC'ing large programs.

To load, My Control only works when set as follows-

9102 Baud Rate -1 (9600BPS)

9103 Stop Bit -3 (2 Bits)

9104 Parity Check -0 (Parity Bit not added)

9105 Even Parity -0 (odd Parity)

9106 Chr. Length -3 (8 Bits)

9108 Hand Shake -3 (DC Code Method)

9109 DC Code Parity -1 (No parity to DC Code(DC3=13H))

My Computer is set at-

Format -ASCII

Baud Rate -9600

Parity -Even

Data -7

Stop Bits -2

Echo Terminal Emulation is checked on

I know the device settings don't coincide but its the only way it has worked for me so far. Does anyone know any tricks that I havn't figured out?

I forgot to mention when I do try to DNC I select search on the monitor page , enter the program name (and change the last digit from 0 to 1), The controler says searching, I send from the PC, the control then finds the program, The PC keeps spooling out the code without stopping, The control then errors out.

[ 08-18-2005, 11:31 AM: Message edited by: Moldmaker74 ]

I have done this in Solidworks with a swept command driving a 60 Deg triangle along a helix. I do 90% of my modeling in Solidworks and use Mastercam for toolpaths.

If you power down and reboot the control It should reset. This has happened to me before when I pressed the "reset tool" button.

Deco, If you need to check durung production you could try making go/no-go ring gages in .0002" increments. Its a easy check for a operator.

If I am reading your problem correctly you want to be able to select a tap and have it plug in the correct speed and feed, right? If that is the case you should enter your desired rpm and feed rate in the parameter page in your tool definition and then save each size tap as a different tool in your tool library. No excel formula neccesary.

My 2 Cents

The spiral point tap is good for thru holes only, but use a spiral flute tap (has flutes like a drill) for blind holes.