Does anyone have any idea if in the currently or in the future, the tool path that shows on the screen will be selectable? It would be nice to be able to click on toolpath that is displayed on the screen to set depths or even just to open a tool path and select a profile from the screen to edit.

Ok, I tried that and it didnt work for me. It did work however checking the "check gap motion for gouge" Im assuming that in a situation like this one that shouldnt be a problem.

tjbender: I set the check surface offset anywhere from .005 to .05 and got the same results. Ive done everything from play with surface tolerances to changing every gap setting available and no luck. Changing the depth limits did absolutely nothing and neither did optimize cut order. newchsmcam: I really didnt want to have to go through a bunch of trouble having to create a boundary for this and it shouldnt be necessary. Maybe I am misunderstanding what the term "check surface" means. I thought that it meant a surface to stay away from, not to machine along with. What I ended up doing is shorten the surfaces that are supposed to be the bolt heads and add extra offset to make sure that the ball nose misses them. This was an easier solution than creating a boundary chain. I am hoping that there is a solution that will use the check surfaces as they are intended and just stay away from them while machining the drive surface.

I keep trying to create a surface finishing tool path that was supposed to be quick and dirty to machine an angle on a thin part. There is only one part and we dont want to spend time making tooling. The problem im having is, when I use check surfaces to keep the path away from bolt heads, instead of just staying off of the check surfaces the tool path seems to want to climb up the check surface while feeding. I dont understand why it would do this. Can anyone tell me how to get it to stop doing this? Ive played with the gap settings to no end and nothing has worked so far. Im posting a picture but the picture is just linked since its to large to post right to the forum. Picture [ 07-31-2008, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: Neurosis ]

ret_on_indx : 0 #Machine home retract on rotary index moves, (0 = no, 1 = yes)

Ive never used this function before so I have a quick question. When this slows cutters down in corners, does it only do internal corners or does it to internal and external?

X+

- Dell 24" UltraSharp 2408WFP Widescreen Monitor I have one of these monitors and love it.

I used it constantly but keep it turned off in the defaults. I agree that if you have someone programming behind you and they dont use this function it could get everyone in to trouble. I do however find it very convenient some times and dont mind it being there. Ive just trained myself to pay attention to the box while programming to make sure that its not checked when I dont want it.

Thanks Colin. Looking through the post I was worried that was what I was going to have to do. #comment out the lines that is. I may just leave them in there who knows. I make back ups every time I make edits. I havent started to use mpmaster yet. Im still changing it to my liking. I hope to be using it in the near future. BTW, I missed you at the Expo. I went there but didnt mingle very much. I ended up leaving a little early. quote: Mastercrash? Must be a new software product. -------------------- Cheers, Mick You werent aware that it was being distributed with the optional "test your file saving skills crash option"?

I did a search and have only found how to add this info. I browsed through mpmaster for a switch to try to turn this information off but maybe I missed something. N824 (TOOLPATH - FINISHFLOW) N825 (STOCK LEFT ON DRIVE SURFS = .025) I'd like to turn this off. Is this as easy as a switch? I can find where it outputs in the post but would like to be able to switch it on and off if possible so that I can have this option if wanted in the future.

Colin, Does this only work if you start the file using "user defined" for the tool setting. I opened an existing file, changed the tool settings to user defined, clicked on the tool in an operation, and it changed the rpm and feed rate to what was defined in the tool settings page. The strange thing is, if I hit the x on the operation to close without saving, re-open the operation, click on the tool again, it doesnt change the rpm and feed rates the second time. Very strange. Im going to try creating a couple of part files using "user defined" in the tool settings, and see what happens from there.

quote: I set my tool library for a default speed and feed and set the default on stepovers and down to zero. Any stepover, depth of cut, and speed/feed modification is then made in the toolpath parameter as opposed to the tool settings. Tool settings are across the board. Toolpath parameters are individually maintained. I wonder if this same idea would apply using material library for default speed/feeds since setting the material library uses a combination of the tool and material. I went through and changed all of my milling tools in the tool libraries to 0 for side steps and depths with the exception of the drills. Thanks for that information. I'll see if this works for me.

This is a dumb question I am sure and I may already know the answer but I have to ask anyway. I know that there are several different tool settings that effect your operations. The problem is, even with the same tool or the same operation in different situations. I make some modifications to feed rates and some times side steps or depths to adjust for a particular situation. Well if I have to for some reason either move a ucs due to material size or change a tool for one reason or another and re-run these operations, it changes everything to whatever I have set in the tool settings. I then have to go back and try to remember which operations I adjusted and fix them one by one or bad things end up happening. A good example is I have a tool that is interpolating two different diameter holes. One is 2" dia, one is .55 dia. im using a .5 endmill. (this is a fabricated situation by the way, just an example. ) I have the large hole interpolating at 70ipm but I cant interpolate the small one at that feed so I change it by hand to say 12 ipm. If i have to re -run this operation for any reason it will change the feed rate, side steps, depth of cuts, etc to whatever is set in my tool or operation or whatever I have selected in my tool settings page. Is there a way to stop this from happening? Its annoying to set everything and fine tune and have a material change and have to just about go through and fix every feed rate, side step, and cut depth.

So I am supposing that you will have to have the solid licensing for the FBM to work?

Well then I guess there is finally one thing the lathe guys have that the mill guys dont.

quote: Well THAT'S the problem you've only dabbled. While that may be true, some of the "dabbling" was quite extensive. I found buggs in mastercam right away. More importantly, work losing catastrophic buggs. Some software took me weeks to start finding the buggs if I found any at all. Not saying that there werent any. quote: I've used and been productive with no less than 6 other system, from lesser lights to heavy weights. Ive played with about the same amount. Probably around 6 or 7 ranging from low to high end using 4 of them to make a living for years. I still use three at the moment and mastercam is by far the worst one when it comes to buggs and losing work. Since I started using mastercam I now use the Backup function and it has saved my A$$ on several occasions. quote: One BIG company releases bug fixes almost every week. I sure wish that Mastercam would do this. If they would at least show that they are making an effort to fix the buggs instead of just letting us live with and work around them then my boss probably wouldnt have half the heart ache that he has for mastercam. I myself am starting to like the software and if it were more stable I would surely like it a heck of allot more.

I wish there was an option next to the Roll cutter around corners that allowed you to define a corner rad while rolling around the corners.

quote: Everyone here knows that MC has flaws but it's still the best out there. Maybe not in every aspect but I would challenge you to buy a competitors CAM package and then try to hire some one who is familiar with it. You will have less than 10% of the applicants. Mastercam is the leader because more people use it and are familiar with it. Ive had the opportunity to dabble with allot of cam systems out there and have never come across one with the amount of buggs that mastercam has. I hardly believe that because more people use it and are familiar with it makes it the "best". My boss bought it because more people use it and has been so ticked off at all of the buggs in the software ive been having a hard time keeping him paying the maintenance. The software we previously used, he dropped because of the huge mastercam following and the ease of finding programmers but we didnt have a fraction of the issues with that other software. Ive come to like mastercam allot more than I had in the past and enjoy allot of the functions it has to make my job easier but the "best?" I dont know about that.

quote: I got an announcment from my reseller telling me the Tech expo is going to be in the middle of next month and they are releasing X3. Anyone else heard this? I just talked to our reseller and got the same information. The date we got was an "about" date so nothing 100% for sure. Within the next month or two is the rumor.

Hopefully I am not mistaken here, but ive used every combination of incremental and absolute for the retract/top of stock/depth and get the results you are looking for. I always use Absolute for clearance. Make sure that the "use clearance only at the start and end of operation" is unchecked.

Yea, the code above may have been misleading. I hand wrote that code as an example. It didnt come from the part file. Sorry for that. It was actually code for an 8-32 tap where as the part file had a 1/4-20.

Forget that last statement. I figured it out by reading the code and changing (more like removing) the math. Changed the F to an E above and removed th e math and it works like a charm. Thanks again. I wouldnt have been able to figure this out without your help.

Hey! thanks! It worked fine. The only thing that was missing was the , but I was able to fix that easy enough. Im glad that you helped with that. I think it may have been a bit over my head. (may have spoke too soon) Its still posting out a feedrate instead of the E for the pitch. Im going to look at it again here when I have a few spare moments to see if i missed something. [ 05-08-2008, 05:05 PM: Message edited by: Neurosis ]

I havent looked at the generic Post. Ive been setting this post up for a while and have it tweaked exactly how I want it. It works universal for every one of our machines except for this little problem. I wonder if I could just copy the code out of that post in to this one?? The , is not a typeo and is needed. That is what tells the control that it is using a rigid tapping cycle. Strange I know but this is my first experience with a mitsubishi control so .... Thanks for the help!