Good advice! I especially like the graphics shop. I clean forgot about those. They got some really nice machines they use to cut stickers etc. Funny, when you see those kind of "end user" machines all our lastest and greatest CNC 50 axis milling equipment actually looks and works primitive. Water jetting might be and expensive option, but good luck! It'll definitaly get the job done.

15:30pm here in South Africa, but Hiyas!

I'd agree with you there. Without temperature being a factor and your variance is already .0002 - .0003, I'd don't think you'll be able to do what you want to do. To hold .0005 I'd expect "static" repeatability of .0001

How about if you take a part, any (room temperature) part. And without machining it or anything. Probe it in 8 places, and immediatly probe those exact same places again. Those have to give you a repeatable set of figures. edit to add... If it does then I don't know what to except adding a temp gauge to the job...

But then again, you say you can load from the new PC without hassles, just drip feeding is a problem... I take it that you are using the same software to do this... Bloody weird, but I'd havta agree with you then, must be something in the control.

OK... Long shot... Try forcing your comm ports down to a "safe" baud rate like 9600 or 2400. I have found some software that was unable to convince windows to change the baud rate. To force a baud rate change pull the Properties of "My Computer", Hardware, open your device manager, pull the Properties of the Com port. Double check that all buffers have been disabled (Under Advanced)and force the com port down to 9600.

Sr's sounds the most logical, and I'm no IT boff, but I'd guess you'd havta use admin tools to change privs on the server from a workstation.

Even if a chain looks linked 2D wise, it has to be linked in 3D in order to chain. For instance, if you have a half circle at Z0. and you have the circle's other half at Z100. they will not chain in the top view. Either Squash them as said, or draw in 2 extra lines that will connect the Z0. half circle to the Z100. half circle. Then you can select the high half circle, then the down line, then the low half circle, then the up line that connects to the other side of the high half circle. That will be a valid 2D contour chain.

Jeremy. That sounds like broken surfaces. Try increasing your gap% to keep the tool down.

OK... Sorry, I didn't read through all the replies, but here goes... I'm running my VF3 through a network. The reason why you're struggling to get your machine communicating on various netwrks is that little NETBios setting that you must enable to get your Haas communicating. If you go through the step by instructions on how to setup your PC so it will communicate with your Haas machine, you will see that you must change that one little setting to force NETBios to be enabled. Now this is where the fun begins. NetBios is not a routable protocol. in other words, if you connect your Haas machine to a router it Nothing that is connected to the router will be able to "see" your Haas machine. I've never tried getting the IPX going, but I don't think that'll run through a router either. And I havn't seen old fashioned hubs around in a while. The old IPX and Netbios protocols where broadcasters. In other words, If I want to send anything across a network, my message would stop at each PC along the line and ask "Is this message for you?"... And it would continue to do so until the intended recipient says "Yes, that message is for me, thanks". TCP doesn't work that way. Your PC gets registered at every router, so a message is not broadcast, but sent to where it's supposed to go. OK, the easiest way to work around this is to have "translator" between the Haas machine and the routing network (Your office network). To do this, get a "translator pc" at your haas machine that has 2 network cards installed. The one network card connects only to the Haas machine, directly (Note that you will need a crossover cable for this. A normal 1 to 1 flylead won't work). The second netowrk card is connected to a router on your network. Then you simply enable NetBios for the Haas card only, and your all setup. Now when you send stuff from your office, it is received by 2nd network card in the PC. And you can pull it to the control through the first network card. Also note that the default adress for the Haas Machine is 192.168.1.x ... The default ip adress range for a regular office network is 192.168.0.x ... This means that your Haas machine is excluded from direct comms with the office network by the subnet mask 255.255.255.0 I pull programs into my control at true 10Mb/s speed. I don't have a lot of memory on the control though... But I'd say I can load a full 1Mb program in about 10 secs. HTH Oh yes, forgot to add. Each network card in that translator PC has it's own IP adress. So the router card will have forinstance 192.168.0.x (To make it visible and accessable on your company network), and the Haas card will be 192.168.1.x (To keep the machine invisible on the company network, and ensure easy 1 on 1 comms between the translator computer and the Control itself).

Doug... Here's my setup... I have my main PC in my design office. Then you could simply network it to the control, but if you want to change something, you have to walk all the way back to the office. So I installed a cheaper PC at the control aswell. Now to make sure that my CNC does not interfere with the company's network, I put 2 network cards in the CNC side computer. 1 card simply connects to the control, and the other connects to the company network. So my control is on a another ip range on its own. Now here's were I got clever (Atleast I think so). I installed a remote administartion tool on the PC that's by the CNC machine. So on an average day, I'd do the program and post it on my office computer. Then I'd simply copy it to the computer at the CNC. I have a little LAN chat program, like IRC. So I type to my operator "Hey, there's the filename, machine it. And collect your setup sheets from the network printer". So he gets hardcopies of his setup sheet and he gets the program on his pc. He loads it into the control as normal. Then he calls me and says something like: "Your roughing cuts start way above the job, come look here". Then I trot off to the machine. I have a look at what he's saying. Then from his PC I can login to and "take-over" my machine in my office. So I have all the processing power and all the files of my office computer, but I'm using this small pc simply as a remote interface. I change the stuff I want to. Save the mastercam file, post it, and copy the new program from my office machine, to his machine, at which I'm standing. Pretty nifty I thought :-) So I can never wind up with more than 1 mastercamfile, since I always only access the files on my office PC. I don't use any stiffies or rs232 for loading programs.

On a side note... I picked up a problem using DNC on my Haas VF3... I thought it was data starvation, but I eventually found that some of my tool descriptions were longer than others and that the ( ) comments before the toolchange would actually crash my program because the line was simply too long for the Haas control to accept. Funny enough, it never told me anything like that, but if I shorten those tool comment lines, it runs fine.

I have exactly the same problem, but i have no idea what all you guys just said here. I always keep my CP and TP the same. And well... I added a A0. in my initialization move of my code ;P But the fact that my POST did not add a A0. in my first move bothered me. Then I had a look further down and I saw that every time I indexed it used the next datum point. Like instead of just G54, it went on to use G55 G56 and G57 aswell. I was doing a 4 sided milling operation. These I also edited manually. When I have a bit more experience with mAstercam I'll get into all this other funny stuff.

If this is a casule cut along it's length I'd start with a surface rough pocket then finish it with a surface finish contour. On second thought, the product would probably look better with a surface finish parallel cut. Just remeber to keep the chips out of that cavity! If your cutter starts rechewing them your finish is really gonna suck. And climb climb climb!

What I did, was link my inner and outer boundry with a road 0.01mm wide. Since my smallest cutter is 10mm dia. it would overlap the road always.