You can use these even if your not licensed for 5x?

I have an ear that is not perp. to the floor of the part. I have on a technigrip with the ear normal to the machining plane. To contour this ear I would like the endmill to travel along the floor while contouring the profile of the ear. What is the standard procedure for making this type of cut in mc?

This thing has code: 3 Set all of your Control Definitions to use HTML.set as your Setup sheet template under the Files Control topic. You'll have to also set this in the active Control Definition for all existing MCX files. There is no HTML.set file anywhere that I can find.

Haha.. well, i wish that it were that easy. I am moving/copying operations into different tool path groups in the same machine group operation. That box never pops up. If it did my problems would be simple.

Is there a way to keep this from happening? When I am creating different profiles using the same tool, if I change the feed rate from one profile to another, I later look at my tool list and it has the same tool duplicated several times for each operation. Is this normal? Is there a way to get this to stop? OH yes... I should add that I think that it only does this when I copy or move tool path to another tool path group

Thank you! I like the tool list output allot better. This just keeps getting better and better. Now I just wish that I knew how to use excel so I could make a decent template.

Matt... yes.. I'll have to remember to do one or the other. I hate having to change all of these settings all of the time. I wish that the settings would give you a choice to default to a set distance rather than a percentage of the tool.

Would that work for a waterline roughing type routine? I need something that will act like a face milling routine that watches out for surface islands removing allot of material fast.

Is it possible to create a waterline roughing tool path that will lead in outside of the material? I can only see two options and that is ramp and spiral. I cant really create a lead in point outside of the material boundry since the tool path (some crazy looking path being generated here) leads in from every direction around the core imaginable.

quote: change feed plane and top of stock to 0 incremental. I tried that with no success. So far the only thing that has worked is what Chris suggested. Checking the Retract and setting the value to 0 which I had tried and knew that it worked (as you can see the greyed out value in retract is 0) but I dont understand why you must use this workaround. The retract plane should have nothing to do with the feed plane. Its strange that it should even consider starting its feed from the clear plane. This is something that I will have to watch closely in the future as I always try to rapid down to the cutting plane whenever possible and as long as it is safe. Im starting to wonder if I am going to have to start naming some of my default operations things like (face feed from clear plane workaround) or so.

I basicly want to rapid down from z clear right to where the face mill is going to start cutting. Well ive tried almost everything but it seems to want to feed down from z clear unless I check the rapid retract. Can anyone tell me if this should be working this way?

I seem to have a problem forgetting to turn cutter comp off in my operations when going from a 2d contour to 2d ramp (for ramping bores) and my post keeps outputting cuttercomp in the radius even though Ive unchecked that option in the control definition. My question, is there a way to keep it from outputting the cuttercomp in the rad line in the post or in a case like my absent mindedness where I forget to turn it off or change it to "computer" is there a way to change several operations at a time to turn the cutter comp off?

quote: You can go into Toolpaths - Material Manager to create/edit/delete your material definitions. I dont think that you can do a (save as) in this area. You only seem to be able to do a (save as) in the speed and feed calculator area which I dont really understand but its been working for me. I make changes in there and then (save as) whatever material I want. I was just curious if there was another way to do this. Seems strange to me that you wouldnt be able to do the same thing in the "material manager".

I figure that ive asked about 100 dumb questions in the last two weeks so whats one more? I notice that when you are creating tool path and you go in to the feed and speed calculator, you can make changes to the material and then have an option after making changes to save it as a different type of material. Is this the only place that you have this option?

quote: I always use edit point options to get what I want but if I had that many holes to do I would probably make points in the holes to the depth i wanted and made the depth incremental in the toolpath. Im sorry for my ignorance, but what is edit point options?

Your a saint! Thank you!

Is it possible to create a new machine group inside of a part file and import all of the tools from another machine group in the same file? Im making an assembly and some of the parts are made of aluminum and some of steel and I created separate Machine groups to specify the different materials. I can only see the option to import operations but I dont really want the operations imported, just all of the tools.

Once again, I am not hung up on having only one operation per say, but the part is 40 " long with 100's of holes at different diameters and all spread out over the entire length of the part. It doesnt make sense to have the machine travel over 40" for one diameter of hole and then over the same 40" to do a different diameter. Especially when there are several different diameters. Luckily they are all on the same z level this time so that isnt an issue.

So what does everyone do in a case where you need to spot drill lots of holes with multiple depths? Do you create points at the multiple depths and use incremental depth or... ?

Rickster, Now that you mention it, I think that the file that I imported operations from was a x2sp1 file. Now I am using x2mr2sp1! go figure. Thanks for the input.

Actually, either. E is leaps ahead.

quote: We know [Wink] If you had ever used cimatron you would see my point.

My problem is that the holes are also on different levels. I'll remember this solution for future reference though when drilling holes that all have the same z start level. This is also another function that worked well in the last system I used. I could, in the same operation, select all points that start on one z level and depth, then select any points on any other level and depth, or even had the ability to select the points and enter the depth for each individual point while selecting, then once done selecting, choose my sort option and then run. Simple as pie. One operation with several z start points and several different z depths. Im having some growing pains here I guess. What can I say. I guess if I would have never used a different system to start with I wouldnt know that any of this was possible. These are all things that would be nice additions to mastercam though. Its funny how using mastercam now and having used another high end system prior, It would be nice if the other system had some of the functionality of mastercam, but some of the more simple tasks from the other system I really miss. They were things that were really time savers. I work in a shop that does allot of one off's and several of them a day so programming efficiency is a must. When I find myself battling to create efficient tool path in and efficient manner I get a little frustrated.

Oh yes, and one more thing... The ability to create a drill cycle operation with multiple depths. Im doing a job that has several holes that are the same size but need to be drilled at different depths. The part is about 30" long and the holes are spaced out all over the place so I am having to create an operation that travels the whole length of the part for one depth of hole and then another operation that travels the whole length of the part again for another depth of hole and again and again. To create three different depths of holes the machine is traveling over the span of 90" of part length because I cant set more than one depth per operation. Lots more wasted time.

Well, z steps are easy in a 2d contour. If you ignore the z depths I am talking about the multi passes. I should have left the zdepths out to keep it from being confusing i suppose. Basically I am looking for the easiest and most efficient way to remove that material with the least amount work and more importantly, the least amount of construction geometry (none would be best) but it doesnt make sense to just use a 2d contour and have the endmill pull up and rapid back to the start point every time since 2d contour only allows climb "OR" conventional cutting and not mixed.