Del, How often do you feed your fish. He seems very content.

CNC, Move the start point .05 to the left and regenerate.

Steve, Our supplier doesn't teach wire. Your the first I've heard of doing that.

beej, I am in pretty much the same boat your in except we have our machines (Fanuc, and Mitsubishsi)already. Do you know wire? I'm learning. I know Mill3 V9 and now I'm getting much better at MCAMX It takes awhile to get setup as far as burn settings and posts no matter what prog. you use such as Mastercam or Esprit. I see issues myself with MCAM but we are going to get our supplier to spend a day with us at work and get the posts right and see if there are things I'm doing wrong or if there are bugs. The transistion is more than we had in mind from Esprit to Mastercam. So far Esprit is faster, but that could be operator inflicted. It helps a real lot knowning Mill level 3 as I do from V9 but I'm am having a hard time not knowing wire. I have my op. library set so I can just call things up when needed in X. Time will tell for us.

I used to like the using the finish flowline whenever I could also as the stepover was consistant on the contoured surfaces and the tpath generation was fast. Scallop is great when needed but takes up a lot of memory. To rough I also agree with everyone that Surface Rough Pocket is the way to go. Cheers

Negative stock is faster to get the job done and the electrode depths do need to be checked as compensating can have its drawbacks. But it is quicker. The other way is to just offset the wireframe on another level and offset surfaces manually (time consuming) or create a new surface. Solid shelling is pretty good and then saving the offset shell. Smart electrode (Pro-E add on)works but there is a learning transistion period.

Actually forcing the autocurser works pretty good for me, then it asks what line to keep.

Good point Gcode. No one likes getting bit. Thanks for the good suggestion. I also like verifying it's tangent by analyzing the intersection after the fact to make sure it is there correctly.

Seems to me you need to enter a length in the box, and I enter an angle also and lock them. They are locked when the values are red. The last time I created a line tangent I had had to zoom in close to get it drawn correctly. I am of coarse assuming you did not enter a value as I state. Good luck as X takes some getting used to. I still am.

Pete, Do you own a SpecV car? Some of these guys know alot about post setup!

Thad, I just had my printer updated and it now has more memory. I did not get a new printer. A service guy came in and worked on it as well as several other printers here. As a result I can print shaded. Not so sure if I can print a really large file shaded. Can you load another printer from somewhere else at your facility and give that a try? Did you try printing it as only a solid? Just a thought.

Draftmaster, MCX works great for opening prt. files. File open/Change the type of file on bottom and click arrow/prt. type files/then open the file from it's location on your computer. If you don't have solids installed on your computer just delete all solids. All your surfaces and wire frame etc. will be there.

Hey Surfcam, How's the wire programming going? I'm new to wire and was wondering if your getting any problems with MCAMX Wire. One I got today was my Fanuc wire mach. wouldn't draw the program so I knew something was wrong. Seems I tried to finish the no core as one operation with 3 finish skims. When I did the same thing in 2 operations the machine drew it and it was good to go. GO figure. Ever get anything like that or your geometry chains change on you?

Dan, If it doesn't work that well I'm just curious what tolerance you are using in the filter and also in your linear tolerance?

I think we were talking about 2 different things. I was just mentioning the actual Z height of the geometry needed to be requalified by hitting the depth button and clicking on the geometry to reset the Z. All the other parameters were always the same when I imported an operation. Even the Z cut depths. That's all.

My boss is going to get us a post book. I could use one since I have no understanding how they are setup. Thanks again Del

Filter

It's great to chat with a wire guy! In control Def./Linear I had the corner control set to control cutting mode. I just changed it to "control corner rounding mode". Is that what you are stating? As I would like to try it. Thanks Del!

hey Del, I'm actually trying to illiminate a .0003/.0004 gouge on a part I did. I am using 2 Fanuc wires and haven't done the Mitsubishis yet for programming. We do 1 rough pass and 2 skims most of the time. I need to see how this works to prevent the small gouge, We mostly are using esprit and trying to change over to MCAMX. I just felt it would be great to get rid of that .0004 step. Do you get any gouge?

Roger, Thanks for the info! It is working better now but; It was set at 30 degrees and that's what the machine can do so to help eliminate problems I switched it to 45 degrees. The machine config./Machine Base start Z position was set to 10 inches for some reason unknown to me. So I switched that to Zero on the Z. Saved my definition/ Then had to delete the problem toolpath. I had gone in that program so many times to figure it out that I may have had an extra toolpath as a repetition. Also some of my start positions in my operations library were set set to a Z of 10 inches. so I changed that to Zero. So it seems ok now. I seem to be having some problems with a toolpath that has geometry and another with the same geometry since I want to do different things like a line entry and exit on the first pass but a line and radius entry and exit on the 2 skim passes. I need to do this much more to see if it is consistant as I am new to wire. Thanks again.

Doug, ______________________________________________ ie profile op was copied and ended up with the default cut depths. ______________________________________________ When I was using Mill 3 in V9 I always had to change the Z depths. I always picked new geometry and had to click on the surface or an entity to reset it.I don't believe having the same Z in the stored operation is an issue. Shouldn't you just need to change your library Z depths to a safe number so when you import them and forget to change it you won't get bitten? That's if I'm understanding you correctly.

I get a notice stating "taper angle exceeds limit in machine definition" at times. I get this with my wire contour tpath. I can't find the cure. I thought it would be something simple to fix but I can't find the solution. I've certainly found the problem, just not the solution. I've been looking everywhere in my machine definition and nothing looks abnormal to me. Then again I don't know what it should really be like anyways. This may be a situation I had created. Any thought? It's a Fanuc wire machine.

Did you ever try filtering the toolpath to .00005 or at .0001 creating arcs in xy. This works for wire. If your splines are 3D I'm not sure if you can set your configuration to create arcs in Z. I'm in wire so I don't need to do the latter of the 2. Breaking many pieces at a tight tolerance seems to be a real good way to go also. Watch your backplot against the filtered splines at a tight tolerance and you'll see it follow it real well.

Del, Depth can be hard to control still. But maybe it's still the ticket! A redesigned part to blast would make it even easier. But they may not have that option.

Sorry about that last reply as it seems the holes you need are not thru holes. I was pertaining to that.