I have the same dilemna regularly. High Speed Core is what I have been ending with most. Sometimes I need to play with the containment bounderies. I agree that the toolpath is not as efficient as I would like but I can usually tweak setting to get it 'good enough'. Beats laying out roughing paths by hand. Also seems to work better when the roughing tool is relatively small in comparison to the part. Your method of backplotting a surface contour toolpath, offsetting and redriving is what I usually do when the cutter is relatively large compared to the part.

I run a Dell but it would NOT be my first choice. I would much rather have a custom built on an Asus MoBo. Almost any brand name mobo is better than Dell. Dell = Wal Mart of computers. The only reason I use a Dell is because that's what my boss bought. Sorry about the Dell rant. OK, not really sorry.

quote: Transform toolpath has at times given shaky results. A heads up to you guys that got burned on Transform Toolpath in older versions (V9 and previous), tranform toolpaths work much better now in X2, especially mirror. They can save you a whole lot of work if you'll let them. You still want the mirrored geometry because on closed toolpaths you will probably want to change the start point. And sometimes 5-axis toolpaths get hosed up and need to be re-written.

When using the new Surface Toolpaths how do I prevent the cutter from rolling over the edges of a surface? i.e. how do I tell MasterCam to only cut just on the selected surface? I know I can build tool containment or use the 'old' toolpaths.

XP64 and/or extra memory appears to have little if any affect on MC performance UNLESS you need to run other processor and memory intensive applications at the same time.

You CAN climb mill ID threads from the top down, but you get left hand threads.

Just mentioned it a couple of times here on the forum. Will submit to qc.

We do this all the time w/ X2. Do a Transform toolpath. Choose the following options: coordinate method, operation order, create new operations and geometry. Select all the toolpaths you want to mirror using the control or shift keys. Set your mirror methods and hit the green checkmark. You will now have new drive geometry associated with new toolpaths all nicely mirrored. Xform translate 'All Xform Result' and regenerate toolpaths and wa-la, mirrored and transformed part. Double check your toolpaths after the mirror opperation, sometimes a few paths will need to be re-chained. This has been working well in X2 but is BROKEN in X3.

In places like that I use Point Toolpaths to make intermediate rapids out and around the part. Its kind of a pain because you have to break the 5 axis path into single pass segments with the point moves in between.

I have always used a retract to clear the part in the Z.

quote: Possibly they were in a "group". In X click on "groups" button at the bottom of the screen. Select a group and then colors, then use entity colors. Or you can choose to 'delete' the 'group' from the same "groups" menu. That won't remove the entities in the group, just their association as a group.

Like Span said, if you are using a 'skip tooth' style thread mill you will need to adjust your tool path to make at least two complete revolutions while cutting the threads. So total z travelled should be double (minimum) the pitch of the threads.

This is not good. We use it enough we may decide to go back to X2.

Bummer. Thanks.

I had been using the tranform toolpath - mirror quite a lot in X2. Now it doesn't work? Just like shazam said. (I know I can do it OLD WAY, but it was working so slick!)

When I'm done verifying a toolpath and return to MC the (insert expletive) red arrow in my operation manager goes clear to the bottom of all the operations and all the machine groups get expanded. This is very annoying. Is there a way to prevent this behavior?

Same thing happens to me in X2 since I started using XP64. I've been blaming it on Windoze.

Programming in the dark is old school from using low resolution CRT monitors with shiny, curved screens. Good quality monitors in a well lit area is much easier on the eyes.

I feel the 'break thru' feature is redundant. I don't need a third way on the same page to adjust my Z cutting depth. I don't use the 'Z stock to leave' either. When going into someone else's or an old program the possibility of an error in 4 different places (including geometry) makes it easy to miss something.

Iscar makes some shrink fit holders down to 1/8" or 3mm that load into standard ER20, ER25, or ER32 collet chucks.

Balance, ridgidity and concentricity are comparable. Heat shinkers are simpler and have much better clearance and more choices of lengths. You are 'only' doing 14K and with small tools, check out Iscar's line of ER32 heat shrinker tooling.

When trimming two arcs, mainly. For me anyway.

Apparently at some point in the past CNC made the descision that an arc created on the top plane is not the same as an arc created on the bottom plane even though they may have the same center, end points and radius. The two planes are seperate and both are real. In (most?) other CAD/CAM software the bottom plane is actually just the underside of the top plane, arcs created from the bottom plane are mathemathically in the top plane. CNC would have to make substantial changes in MasterCam to change one of the basic logics of the system, hence the need to occasionaly 'flip' some arcs from one plane to another. Before I discovered 'combine views' I would go to a side view and rotate to offending arc 180 degrees so I could trim them.

quote: Are you sure about the crapware? Relatively sure, I haven't done a full depth search yet of all the running processes and services. I have to be a little careful here at work because a couple of things "have" to be left running for the IT guy. As far as drivers, what should I update besides the video driver? I have only one HD, I'm hopeing to get an SSD to use for page file, swap files, etc. maybe next year. RIGHT NOW 16Gb RAM is more than double what I need. I had requested 8Gb, boss upped it to 16Gb, who am I to argue? Next year maybe 16Gb won't be enough.

quote: How is it that my pc beat duel Zeon's?? quote: I'll bet his still has all Dells crapware sucking up resources. My computer came w/out OS installed and our IT insatalled a fairly clean XP-64 from disks supplied by Dell. Crapware was never installed. I did some tweaking with services and did get the time down to 4:48. Because my boss chose to buy a Dell (instead of a local shop build) I am limited in my ability to make the machine run fast. I AM dissapointed in the performance, I expected a little faster. Part of the difference is the 3.2GHz vs my 3.0Ghz CPUs. However, this thing is a monster. The benchmark does not show everything. For instance, this computer is 'only' 2x faster than my old one one the benchmark file, but maybe 10-20 times faster on large 5-axis toolpaths. Also, I can be running two sessions of Vericut, have a Catia file open, let MasterCam regenerate an entire file and still work NORMALLY (no hesitations, no noticeable performance degradation, etc.) on another MasterCam file. If I were to do it over and the choice were mine I would get a similar machine but not from Dell.