Thanks for the responses! The Nvidia cards all have single DVI with a 2nd VGA output. The reason for this whole issue is that I was finally able to snag a 2nd monitor. The LCD monitor on the VGA cable has flicker - I've tried swapping VGA cables, and also swapping which monitor is on the VGA, and the flicker moves w/ the VGA output. I've also tried swapping video cards, and have an Nvidia GeForce 7600GT card w/ 512mb ram in there now... I'll check Ebay for the Quadro FX3000 - good suggestion.

Hey guys, I've got a chance to update some of our computers with slightly more modern video cards to run dual DVI monitors. It'd have to be a consumer grade card due to budget constraints... The mother boards are AGP 8X, and searching Newegg, I unfortunately only come up with ATI video cards. Back in the days of V9, ATI anything was a bad idea. I've heard that Mastercam fixed this with one of the X releases - true? I've been out of the Mastercam loop for a few years, and am now getting back into it (mostly to manipulate the models for our CMM & inspection). Talk about a steep learning curve... Nothing I remember from V8 and V9 seems to be the same with X3! Doh! Thanks!

Hell, I just gave my 2 week notice yesterday. I think I'm doing everything backwards - got my MechEng degree, worked for a consulting company as a road xxxxe in nuke plants for 2 years, came to this current small company as a "he's a bright kid, so we'll toss everything his way and he'll figure it out", and learned CNC programming, ISO, QC, machining, etc, to where I design and machine the new parts, and then pass it off to an operator once it's tweaked right... Finally, leaving to make my part time side job designing/fabbing Camaro parts full time. Now or never! Anyways, I came here not knowing much about machining or CNC, and really enjoyed learning and getting good at it. I guess where you go depends on your personality and what you want from life. If your goal is to get rich and retire early, then go into finance. If ya can't stand paperwork, then don't With the knowledge you get from designing the CNC programs, you understand efficient ways to design parts for manufacture. Getting a MechE degree, and going to design the parts seems like a natural progression. With your ability to do the programming and machining, I'd think it's a huge asset to a company, since you can go from idea to prototype on your own. You can also be a supervisor, and babysit other folks

Everyone - I show up this morning, with a whole page of tips from you guys. You guys rule! I'm going to spend today playing with the various toolpaths, and with the above ideas, should be ready to run the prototype. Yesterday, I created curves from all surface edges, deleted everything except for a single side profile, revolved that, created a lathe path, and save it as an .SLT to use as the mill stock in verifying the toolpath (damn, too long of a sentence!). Thanks! Chip - I guess my 5 year old account from school finally got deleted, so I'll have to reload the pictures. I just machined some 3/4" thick exhaust spacers to get tapped for EGT bungs, and move the turbos away from the valve covers. I'll let ya know when I get the new pics up. CMR - I wish I wrote the c-hooks, but I think you may have me confused w/ someone else. The best I can do is modify our posts to turn off coolant before a G28 G91 Z0 Thad, Born and raised in NY, but both parents are from Latvia. Anyways, you guys have given some great tips. Time to try them! Andris, learning something new every day...

Hey guys, In short - what's the advantage of solids? It seems to me that all the complicated machining that you mold guys are great at have to do with surfaces, rather than solids that have 5x larger file sizes. In any case, I'm not sure what next to try on this project (below)... I just received an IGES file of an alternator fan, with a fairly (to me) complex blade shape and profile (3 axis). I'm just getting into surfaces and solids, and this has me stumped. I've attached a picture of the fan (to avoid proprietary issues). From the IGES import, I either tried using the surfaces directly, but couldn't get the tools to go the way I wanted. Most toolpaths had lots of Z axis moves, while I'd rather have the tool contour the z-depth incrementally from the bottom. Surface Finish Radial climbs over the top of the blades, instead of following the blade contour. I thought flowline might be the answer, but it bombs on the surfaces (partial flow edge error detected). At this point, I made a solid from the IGES surfaces, and then a surface from the solid, thinking it would be good, since the solid was good.. Thoughts? Andris

Chris, If it just needs a cert, why not make it in house, and have an outside A2LA gauge house certify it? You get your NIST traceable certification, and you don't spend thousands making it

Step 1: Did ya read the very top post on this board (ironically, titled "New Users Please Read - Forum Rules & Guidelines")?

Andrew & Thoskins, Thanks. I've only used the DNC to punch and download programs to the CNC's, so this is new to me. I guess it's similar to punching out programs, and should be in the "Received Files" area of the DNC program...

Over the last few days, I’ve been learning about Custom Macro B, with the intent of programming a Renishaw MP7 probe for reverse engineering cam profiles. We currently use a rotary 4th axis, index 1 degree, and come down on the Z, so there would be 360 data points. The biggest area of confusion right now is how to get the probed data out to a text file (RS232 to DNC?), to import to excel. From what I can tell, the only outputs from macros are using POPEN, then DPRINT or BPRINT, then PCLOS. Since the machine and the DNC is quite slow, I figured the safest way would be for the macro to make it’s own program (say O0001), write each position as a new line (DPRINT[N1*Z*POSITION*AT*1*DEGREE*IS***#501]), and have the operator punch out the program to the DNC once it's finished. We're just using this data to get rough industrial cam profiles from customers that have ancient, worn out cams and no drawings, and with the data, we can figure out a better motion for the new cam. Since we have more time than $ (right now), I'm using this as an opportunity to learn macros, probing, etc... The machine is about 10 years old, and has the old original Renishaw macros loaded in the 8000 series, FWIW. So… What I’m wondering is how to get the probed data out of CNC world, into people world. Thanks to RobK, JamesM, and Sheila from Renishaw who sent over some documentation about macros to get me started, and all you smart Mcam guys who've been at this a lot longer than myself... Andris

Excellent! Thanks for the good replies. RobK emailed a copy of the Renishaw Inspection Plus manual, and I downloaded the users guide from the Renishaw website, so I'll start there, and give Sheila a call once I actually know what I'm talking about

I've been asked if we can use our Renishaw MP7 probe to automatically reverse engineer cam profiles. Since this is new to me, I figured I'd start with a forum search... Basically, what I'd like to do is bolt the cam onto a rotary table, jog the probe into position by hand, and then have a program index 1 degree, touch off the probe, note the location, back off 1", index 1 degree, and repeat until the full 360 degrees is complete. Right now we've got an operator manually probing the cam profile, and writing down the locations on scrap paper. James mentioned a "custom macro b" here: http://www.emastercam.com/cgi-bin/ultimate...t=012444#000000 What is that? We've got a Fanuc 11M control on the 'ole girl w/ the MP7. I also saw this post: http://www.emastercam.com/cgi-bin/ultimate...t=012563#000001 What should be my next step in learning how to use the probe? I wish I could go to a course, but there's no funds available... Thanks for the help, guys (and gals!).

Hey guys, Some of you mentioned using spline output to get small surface finish g-code file sizes, and faster/smoother finishes than point to point arcs/lines. We just picked up a new machine w/ a recent Fanuc controller (I'll double check which one), and was curious about trying that. 1. Can someone post an example of what the code looks like, and how the machine interprets it? 2. Can mastercam do this natively? 3. Do I need to make/get a new post? I'm using a self modified MP Fanuc post currently on this machine. Thanks everyone!

Could bad power be causing the monitors to blow? Granted, power conditioners seem expensive, but might prevent it. Andris

ISO 9001:2000 and AS9102 compliant here. One of the hats I wear is internal auditor, out of necessity. We're now into MPC, SPAP/PPAP, SPC, etc which just about tripled the paperwork load, but ya gotta do what the customer flows down. Ugh. Too bad they don't have the same quality standards as you do, and then expect to see 5% reductions in cost every year. I think they forgot to budget in the engineering time to fill out all the new paperwork. It's up to about 20 hrs/part # now once it's all said and done. We've got about 30 employees, so I do what I can to keep everyone elses stuff going smoothly...

Thanks guys. I'll give it a shot! Andris

I inherited a part from the last regime that has been getting deburred by hand, and I'd like to program a 1/4" spot drill to put a small chamfer on the sharp corners. There are quite a few compound curves on the part, so I figured I would solid model it, and have the tool follow the profile. What is the best way to have it get the edgebreak on a single pass? I put a .032 radius fillet on the corners to see what Mcam would do, but the various roughing/finish toolpaths all seem to generate way too much geometry, since I'm just looking to get rid of the sharp corners. Any ideas?

That brings back memories of summers at the cottage in Ontario... Windsurfing you'd get a whole flock of them in the draft, and then right as you catch a good gust, they tag up, land on your feet, and rip out a good chunk of flesh, causing you to momentarily forget about the sailing, swat at your foot, drop the sail (that gets blown forward), which then turns into an instant anchor, and you go catapulting into the water at 35 mph. Worst part is that they're waiting for you when you surface. I'm headed back for more punishment next week during shutdown, but this time bringing the mtn bike. Andris

Chris, For our old Fanuc Drillmate (I think it's a robodrill? Small 30 taper machine, but good for engraving if it only had a faster spindle...), I took the MPFan post, and just tweaked that for the way I like programs (names/dates, moving Z & Y to G28 0 position at the end for the operator, adding block skips for optional coolant when dry running, etc). The logic is all the original MPfan stuff.

Problem is that they shovel on so much BS, that once you get the contract, they add way too much paperwork that you'll be giving $10 with each part. That, and they get you to bid against others, where you want to get the job in the hopes of getting your foot in the door, with more lucrative jobs in the future, but it's more of the same. We bid on, and amazingly got a 75 different part number contract, only to have them add SPC to the parts, after the PO was accepted. Grrr... Besides, SPC on 6 part/lot orders is kinda silly, but that's what the specs call for. Make sure you read all the specs, that there isn't something weird buried in there that will make ya lose your shirt.

Whatever happened to that program that some MIT dudes wrote, where you copy->paste a spam email into it, and the program would autogenerate thousands of fake orders to the spammers? If they have to weed through all the fake orders, thats a ton more work for them, for not much return... Andris

We just got a Trumpf laser here. The machine is awesome - For car shows, we used to engrave billet dash plaques with the little 6k rpm Robo-drill mate (20 minutes/piece w/ good logos), and now doing it in the laser in 40 seconds. One of these days, I'll just wheel my toolbox over, and engrave my name into all my tools The quality comes out pretty good for raster files, but is amazingly crisp for vector files. Having a .002 "cutter" is neat.

I got my Tivo in November, and love it! Since getting it, I actually watch much less TV, since all of it is shows that I want to watch, and no channel surfing any more I hacked it (looks real complicated, but the step by step newbie guides are good) and added a 200 gig hard drive. So far so good! Nothing like wrenching in the garage on a rainy sunday, no racing on TV, but having ALMS, GrandAm, F1, TransAm (and maybe NASCAR if nothing else is recorded!) for hours on end. Life is good! That, and having all of the programs you like automatically recorded, without needing to remember. Andris

Millman^Crazy, Simple question - what is a "PSB" (guessing something like source code?). Thanks! Andris

I've been very happy with Adobe Streamline. I think it was around $75 (been a while!), and does well spitting out either Adobe Illustrator vector files that I then export as an AutoCad DWG and import to MasterCam, or directly to a DXF.

My only comment to aid in getting it printed might be to trim down all the good information. Most newspapers could give you guidelines on how long the articles should be. Dunno if a column or two is easier to get published than a full page Andris