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.

I am talking about zig zag at one depth. You can do this in Cimatron very easily and losing that function moving to mastercam was a big hit. I made two programs last night. One in mastercam and one in cimatron to remove material and the time spent programing was about 1/4 in cimatron just because of the ability to do this one simple function. If you want to look on the ftp site i placed a file that shows what I am trying to do. You can tell me if I am going about it the wrong way. Maybe Im just making more of a problem out of this than it really is.

/Mastercam_forum/MCX2_Files/zigzag.MCX

[ 02-14-2008, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: Neurosis ]

Yeap, that looks too complicated for me. Did that start as a recorded macro or was it all hand written? There has to be a simple way to do this isnt there?

Oh yea, did i mention the ability to mix climb and conventional cuts in a 2d contour? Would be nice to be able to rough a step in aluminum without having to rapid back to the start point ever single pass. Or without having to create construction geometry and fake it with a pocket or face milling routine. Wasted time and more wasted time. IM just frustrated because i had to deal with this today. It took me 20 minutes of construction geometry and pocket routines to do what would have taken two minutes if there was a mixed climb/conventional cut in 2d contour.

Your right. What I am saying though is that when you project to that plane the only option is to project "normal" to that plane. I want to project geometry to that plane only normal to the current active plane. You dont even have this option unless you are projecting to a surface. You have to project normal to the plane.

Is it easy to write a macro to delete duplicate tools?

I think that you can resort the tool list before printing. I think that is just as simple as clicking on the tool # column above the list.

I am assuming that you are talking about listing the tools in order "1-10" not in the order used.

I am apparently using the .xss I dont have a preference as of yet. Is one better than the other? easier to modify if needed? I need to learn how to just do this myself??

I'd like to learn how to do this but have never really had a need to worry about it. Are there any good resources to help a newbie out?

I have a quick question and hopefully an easy one. I dont know anything about excel except for how to change values in cells so basically nothing. What I am trying to do is have it export a tool list that doesnt have every single operation showing. I would just like a setup sheet (the basic output from X+ works fine for now) with a tool list at the bottom of the page that only has the tools listed once. Not every operation that the tool does. Is this an easy fix?

yesterday I decided that since I was making a part that was very similar to one that I had made previously that I would just import the tool path operations and redefine the geometry so that I didnt have to go through the trouble of re-defining the speeds,feeds, path settings etc etc. Well, when I started to try to edit some of the operations after importing them mastercam would crash. It would only allow me to edit one operation and when I would try to select the next operation down to make some changes it would just crash. I had to deal with a crash for every operation in the path. Is something that I may have done wrong or is this just a bug?

Has anyone mentioned that it would also be nice to have the 2D contour multi passes have the option to climb "AND" conventional cut so your path is doing more of a zig zag instead of pulling up every pass?

I'll try to answer your question better if needed a little later but here is a brief explanation. If you are working on the top plane say, and there is an angled plane lets say 3" below @ 3 degrees. Just imagine a sign bar at 3 deg sitting below your active plane. I would like to be able to project geometry straight down my active plane to that three deg sign bar instead of just projecting normal to the three degrees. To do this, the only way that ive found is to create a surface on the face of the sign bar and project straight down to the surface. Does that explain it? This of course is just an example and the things that I am trying to do are allot more complicated but same idea.

Has anyone happened to mention the ability to project geometry to a plane along another plane? This is a basic function and you can do it projecting to a surface. So why have to create that surface to project along your active plane? Why not just be able to project along your active plane to another plane instead of only the option to project normal to the other plane?

fwiw.

Thad, my problem is that I am trying to update the tool within mastercam so that I can calculate the speeds and feeds using the material library and mastercams calculator and then upadate the tool in the library. That would be a very simple process and work great on the fly if you could overwrite the library tools.

Now is there a way to add material to the material library without having to fill out every single think in there? I have a material that is similar but not exact to another material that already exists. I would like to copy that material and just make "some" changes to it but I dont want to lose that original material. I dont see an option to copy the material. Do I have to export to a text file and then copy the material and then re-import to a library?

Ive browsed around for this and cant seem to find it. Is there a place to set your max spindle speed? It says something about the control def file but I dont see it.

Now that I think about it, I just switched to X2 mr2 last week. I was using X2 sp1 right before that and it allowed overwriting of the tools. I was wondering if I was doing something wrong. I wonder why they would remove that.

Well, .84 slot 2" deep with a 5/8 5 flute it works great. .2 ear thickness with ears sticking out almost 3" and i can rough it within .0025 and one finish pass and its good to go. Saved about 6 minutes a part.

Crap! I just figured out my stock left problem. The endmill is a reground endmill. Sorry.

One question though, The peel mill seems to leave allot of stock for cleanup even though I set it to leave nothing. Is there an amount that it leaves no matter what? I would like to only have around .002 for a finish pass.

sorry this was reposted but I removed it from that other post due to thinking it was an illusion that it was leaving that much stock.

Marc, it is leaving about .04 a side even though I have it set to leave nothing. I am just using one drive line down the center of an open slot and giving it the slot width (watch the end of the slot!). I notice that you have to shorten the drive line half the slot width for the end of the part. I figured it would just be radius of the tool...... wrong!

The pocketing didnt really do what I wanted but the 2D high speed tool path peel mill looks more like what I am looking for.

[ 02-06-2008, 12:45 PM: Message edited by: Neurosis ]

Thank you. My spelling sucks.

Well, I went out and bought a Logitech MX 400 to see how I would like it. The one at the store must have been broken in because this one has a very stiff middle button/roller and the middle button doesnt seem to work for dynamic rotating the part in masteram. I hope that its just a simple mouse button configuration although I cant seem to find it anywhere in the settings. I dont like it as much as the mouseman! Why did they stop making these mice? I guess I can still get them on ebay.

I figured that i would just use one of the pre-made libraries and just modify the tools to suite my needs on the fly but when I update the tools to match my materials and try to save them to the library, instead of overwriting the tool that is already there, it just adds another tool. Is there a way around that or do I just have to figure on creating a whole library from scratch? Any suggestions would be appreciated.