If you can find a Seibu actually in the country...that would be the ticket.

It may not seem like much of a cut but that Iscar highfeed mill removes steel in a hurry. The only problem is there is LOTS of heat buildup. We had a 2 inch stainless mold plate warp .015 on us.

Do you have a machine that will do HSM? Spindle, controller and rigid tooling are all key.

Make sure all your surface normals are going the same direction.

Word to the wise-people working with Solid Works files: DON'T BLANK ANYTHING! When you go to unblank it you may never find it. You're much better off putting things on different levels.

In machine group properties- tool settings- there is a check box for 'assign tool numbers sequentially'. Is that what you need?

When this happened in 9.1 the only fix I found that worked was blowing away all the operations and starting over. I haven't seen it in X2 yet...I'm sorry to hear it's still happening.

Agreed. Surf.-Finish-Contour worked great.

I know the 18T needs

G76 P______ Q_ R._

G76 X_._ Z_._ P Q F._

P value is 6 characters...first 2 are # of spring passes, second 2 are pull off distance, last 2 are is tip angle for compound feed. R is taper (if tapered threads).

Q is minimum depth of cut (no decimal, 4 place format), R is finish pass amount. P in your execution line is single pass depth (no decimal) F is thread lead.

Tell your boss that there is a network of Mastercam users of varying knowledge levels out there that are more than willing and happy to help you along if you get stuck.

The setup sheet goes up on the machine, when the program is complete it goes in a finished pile. Pretty simple. We keep the pile going for awhile in case we have to look back at tool numbers or something. Each machine has a tray in programming and the operator pulls each setup in order. Either a programmer or the operator shoots the Hurco programs beacause they go out on com ports. The high-speed machines are networked. 5 people total in CNC (including manager) so it's pretty easy to tell who's doing what.

Make sure you have all your windows updates. I know there is a .net update that may help. It helped my supervisors seat.

It looks like the problem may have been bad geometry. When I was picking the chain I didn't notice there was about a 2 tenth gap and one of the branch points...caught onto that when I couldn't move my start point. So it seems like trying to project an open chain was bombing X2 out somehow and it didn't go back to projecting properly until the program was closed and re-started.

To test I brought the bad .iges file back in, fixed the geometry FIRST, then projected and it worked fine.

Is anybody else having problems with Xform-Project? I'm dealing with .iges files out of ProE, and what's happening is at some time Project will start ignoring my level and color AND the fact that EA Manager is off, and the result of my projection will be the default level and color (in this case, 1 and 15.) Again, that's with EA Mgr OFF. Use New Attributes doesn't help, either. Save the program, restart Mastercam and the problem goes away. Anyone?

I'm using OSG Exocarb in Haimer HSK shrink tooling and having great results.

Depending on the machine age they had an unlock code for all the control options (100 hours or something like that) which you could turn on and off. (I used it on a 2002 VF-1). Turn it on and your surface machining will be so much nicer!

If the Metolius wasn't just catch-and-release I'd say the fishing is great there, too.