Well sorry guys but I think you are all a bit soft, These moulds would be a great job and I would love to have it.$$$ Milling this would be the best approach, as long as your machines are up to it. Enough spindle speed A fast enough controller A Data server some good running true rigid toolholders and you are in business, Check out this mould, it was machined with a .005" ballnose, to better than the tolerance you speak off. http://www.aebishop.com/man_prod.htm Now I am not trying to blow my own trumpet I am just pointing out that anything can be made, It's only a matter of cost! After all that's how man got to the moon. Good Luck

Drew, There is no difference between having the job in the centre of the table of having it off centre as long as you know where the datum is. I always use the rotation point of the table as my X0 and Z0. Simply move your part in mastercam so that it is in the same position as it is on the Tombstone. I have done plenty of the work that you speak off this way. Good Luck

Tom, Makino use a macro (Visual basic I think) to do this operation. A Heidenhain uses a Q parameter for the same thing, Perhaps Fadal may have somthing similar imbedded into the control. [ 03-14-2003, 05:10 AM: Message edited by: Budgie ]

Guys, This is bad stuff, Use somthing else if possible! just ask anyone who ground some of the excessive bounce of there Ping Sand iron (Golf Clubs) a few years back. I remember reading of a guys who dyed from doing this!

Jay, I would love to come but unfortunatly it is a little far, Perhaps PDG will shout me a Qantas ticket!

Tom, You sound like an Autocad user, Mastercam will extend or trim lines when trimming 2 lines together. You do not need to use the Autocad trick of trimming 2 lines with the 0 radius command. Welcome to Mastercam!

Sorry guys, This is not a RAM issue, I have 1 Gig of EEC PC800 RAM running on Win2k and I have had this happen on a few occasions. My hunch is that this issue has somthing to do with the WPC system or the T/C planes.

Gents, The below code comes from my Okuma MPmaster Post (Yes it came from my dealer). So if, Arccheck = 1, Use the length tolerance. Arccheck = 2, Use the Angular tolerance Arccheck = 3, ? What is Arccheck 3? Thanks Guys arccheck : 3 #Check for small arcs, convert to linear atol : .01 #Angularity tolerance for arccheck = 2 ltol : .002 #Length tolerance for arccheck = 1 vtol : .0001 #System tolerance ltol_m : .0025 #Length tolerance for arccheck = 1, metric vtol_m : .0005 #System tolerance, metric

My dad would always say to me, Son if you don't have anything good to say about somthing, Don't say anything at all!

Rstuart, The best way is to get the company at this end to organise it for you, This will also see how keen they are at having you come onboard. Good luck and welcome to the lucky country.

Lucky7, I have a similar Pc Except with a Nvidia quadro4 750XGL (128 meg) card It sounds as I do similar work to you. I use the settings below [allocations] 201. Maximum number of points per spline? 20000 202. Maximum number of patches per surface? 64000 203. Maximum number of entities for undelete? 500 205. Database allocation in Kbytes? 256000 206. Toolpath allocation in Kbytes? 256000 I have found that this is the maximaum ram that can be allocated to mastercam. If it works any better please let me know, Good luck

James, Out of interest, What is CoCreate? and what would I use it for?

carl, We love your work man!

Save the file in Solidworks as a Parasolid version 13.0 or a SAT vesion 7.0 and then call it into mastercam.

Sandy, When you have finished for part in Invevtor 6 Save it as a Version 7.0 SAT File, Then import it directly into Mastercam. This works just fine.

Sounds like a filter thing, Was the filter turned on?

Carefull, Mutley bites!

MMM, I'm on the wrong side of this one!

quote: If I understand you right,There is no control that knows to calculate the cutter comp. in control before getting to the depth cut. Elad, All fanuc controllers form at least 15M can set the cutter comp above the job and then go to depth However I am not sure if Mastercam has this function

Hi, I did use mazaks for a while but it was a long time ago. If I remember correctly you need a lead on and off that consists of a straight line and an arc the same as a Fanuc. I guess is that your problem is coming from the tool offset register. I think that all mazak controllers need to have the Diameter not the radius and the diameter needs to be in the program as D1 (for all tools). Otherwise it tries to use the tool length as the radius offset. Hope that this helps

Well here is my 10 cents worth, And no I am not a dealer. If no one were to buy software then no companies will contiue to write it and in the end that will hurt us all. I mean lets get real anyone knows that a quick trip to your favorite Albanian website will result in a free illegal copy of any sotfware that in on the market. The best way to try and slow /stop this is to make some part of that software not avalible and in this case it is the holly Post. I believe that there should be no posts at all on the CD that way you are forced to either really know what you are doing or Buy a Legit copy of the software. Then perhaps then playing field will level out somewhat if we all have to fork out 20K for a programming system.

Serf, I also use toolplanes when doing my 4 axis toolpaths, Somtimes I pick them from the geometry using the same method James mentioned and sometimes I use Tplane Rotate. Either way works just fine.

My old steam driven box had NT4 service pack 6, It worked just fine

Actually I was after a Ferrari! Any model will do!

Slick, I would go for the machine that has the most up to date controller, If both machines are about the same, Go for the most rigid one. As for the EDM, I thought they stopped making those years ago.