Ah ha, the answer arrives. I may have known that a long time ago, don't know for sure but I can tell ya your reply is greatly appreciated. Thank you. It would have been a lot of work offsetting all those tiny splines. This geometry came from Key creator then from Surf cam, then to me in MCam. Doing a pocket with the original geo. then projecting it would have been the quickest way for me in this case I believe especially if I had to lie about the cutter size to get the correct size slots etc... Cheers Todd

Since I don't program much this is a delayed comment but it now looks like the file is not the same as stated because I can open some parasolids. Thank you for all the help!

Had to switch from a 3D Contour path to a Surface finish project Tpath because the ball mill I used didn't follow the surface at bottom of cut. I couldn't figure out why but I had to go with what works so I switched to the surface projected path. The geometry I chained for the 3D Contour was projected onto a compound angle. You could also see the variation in the Z depth by dynamically rotating the part looking underneath with the part shaded. Of coarse I scraped a part before I noticed. Could this be because for the 3D contour to work correctly I needed to chain geometry at the center of the tool and not the edge? Or is this a bug. It was a 3D path because the ball mill was cutting an island and there was a compound surface at the bottom. I'm running X4 Thank you all

J Paris I noticed you put McamX5 I should change that to McamX4? Since I am running X4

Rick ask the salesman. Of coarse he'll say that's all they sell and it's comparable. If the price is cheaper try one or two. To answer your question, I could not say. Good luck.

Thank you for all the help and quick replies. I really do not get to use the computer much but logged into mastercam again today & had seen that I should indeed be able to open a key creator file. I had several located on the company system in my users folder T drive but came up with some other solid errors on each file .CKD when I tried to open them. Also did a quick search on x_t conversions and didn't see anything helpful yet. Right now I am just drawing new solids in Mcam and throwing toolpaths to the geometry. The pc was recently moved without me knowing, and ever since then I have had the mentioned topic problems. The IT guy that comes in once a week finally set me up where I can save files in my users folder. Again, everything was fine before all this so I will talk to the IT guy for starters. So the fun continues.

I was able to open this exact file last week (x_t), but now I cannot because I get a parasolid kernal error. I am using mill 3 and have solids available. I know if you are in design, one cannot open a parasolid. The original file was made in Key Creator. Maybe I am not giving enough info. Any good ideas? Maybe I'm missing a DLL file? Thanks in advance for any good answers. Cheers

It has been while for me using mastercam and need to learn a bunch, but couldn't ramping the contour cause no slowdown in feedrate at the corners?

MasterCam rocks for milling, but in wire, Esprit was the reliable cam package to use for us. Too many times mastercam would choke in wire, that was our experience. I preferred using mastercam wire, but I had several times where the geometry just wasn't working even after redrawing simple 2D shapes. Took the same geometry and programmed the part in a couple minutes with Esprit. Programmed hundreds of holes and shapes in MC and Esprit was a little faster for us because we would run into problems on occasion. Yeah I'm not making points here on this forum stating that, but what was, was and did happen. Yes I am a big fan of Mastercam LOL

Is this a CNC EDM machine? BEcause if it is the trode could have an outside square or retangle for the EDm operator to pick up central that was skimmed cut at the end of the electrode making process. Or see if you can indicate the rib area on the trodes and see if that looks correct. That rib area sounds like it should have a flush hole in it also as just maybe the contaminates caused overburn on the rib side. What kind of tolerance is on the plastic rib area? If it needs to be very close like plus or minus .001 then there is a problem as steel safe is best. If the tolereance is plus or minus .003 or .005 on the plastic then your probably ok. Ask your boss if in doubt. Hope this helps.

Turk, try a search on this ascI had a problem similar in wire a couple years ago. It may have something to do with a z value in your machine definition. I think I changed mine from 10 inches to zero. The large arcs then went away.

I would try suppressing the solids in SW except for one and file/save as/ part file. Or maybe right click on the solid in the tree/then click show/file save as/ part file. It must be something like that. Sorry, I don't know exactly today (tomorrow maybe) but I would try that anyways.

Cobra, for the heck of it observe the x,y locations for starters in verify or cimco, just maybe it's opticle and the posted code is good? I've had weird things like that happen to me in wire. Ignore if you already know the code is no good. You could also contact your reseller and ask them to log into your pc with one of those sessions they do from their office and take a look.

With the flowline up and down you WILL get rid of the zipperline. For what it is worth. Cheers

I prefer to drive it off of a surface with just enough bypass. I would rough with a surface finish contour toopath starting at the top and working my way down then finish with a surface finish flowline going up and down on the Z with an exceptable stepover similar to a radial toolpath the finish is better that way and there is no zipper line as you speak of. The high speed radial in X2 will also do a step over that is similar to the flowline traveling on the Z axis HTH

Magnetic holddowns would also help, but you'll need a magnetic chuck to use them.

An STL file looks like a solid model when I open them as I mentioned. An STL file contains a description of the surface of a solid that has been decomposed into triangles. So if you go to open a STL file you will see triangles. When ever I go to Xform STL before it is in my screen it looks like a solid. [ 09-18-2008, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: edmBosto ]

I can't check this out until I get a job but try this Xform/STL then open file and see if she looks better.

Thanks Millman as I am taking notes on this as I hopefully will need that information very soon. H O P E F U L L Y

I would be there in a heartbeat if you moved the company to Connecticut. But you make me think I could relocate.

We do the same on punches as Chipmakr does. But on dies we'll try to cut out the large opening and drop the slug while we are there trying to get that part done before leaving for the day and then skim complete passes for overnite burning. If that's not possible because of the time of day we rough and skim leaving the slug connected then cutoff then skim pass where the tab was. Wow, it's been awhile for me to think wire as I've been milling lately.

As Phil states I also get better results if I change the splines to arcs. I also like to end the logo with a .001 finish 2D contour Tpath and overlap by just a little in the lead in/out tab. I have been using the minimum arc feed feature for this lately with good results. You can see a smoother flow on the radii in backplot changing to arcs.

Thanks MIC!!! I'll change that on monday. That may be what mchin-pilot needs to change also

I had either made some changes to my existing tool, or I had changed the actual tool and my stepover changed on a spiral high speed toolpath if that's what you are talking about. It changed from about .003 to .0256 aproximately. As usual I was in a hurry to get the job done and I changed the stepover back to .003 and did not try to investigate as to why it changed on me.