Yeah! Great suggestions. I almost can't wait to go back to work in the morning.(well not really) You guys are filled with great ideas. It is most appreciated.

Mastercam just crashed on me and after restarting it discovered my ribbon bar at the bottom of screen was gone. The one with WCS, levels, colors, line and point style etc. I think it went on vacation. Calling up any of the other toolbars didn't matter. Meh thinks a file got corrupted. It was almost time to quit for the day so I ended up shutting down the pc for the night. Does anyone know of a file I could copy from another pc and replace on mine to get the dang thing back? I doubt I'll get it back after restarting the pc in the morning. All this did remind me I should back my recent work up on the server in case my pc dies.

What about looking in a book that you use to order your tools? The specific info is in there. Comes in handy when you have inserts with radii and relief angles. That's if it's what your asking.

Yeah as Kunfused stated. Also it's X,Y,Z .0000 on all axis. Hit the F9 key and the crosshairs will display. That's your stock origin. Hit F9 again and it dissapears. When you Xform, or rotate geometry it defaults to the origin and you have the option to pick where to move it from with the cross icon with arrows in the popup menu.

TRy squashing your geometry to the same plane first.

andrew. Try setting the filter on the helix entry to be unchecked at XZ, and YZ. That may be your error problem. I don't think the Mikron likes it. Neither does Mikey! Sorry, bad joke

quote: but it places the object (with its toolpath) somewhere randomIt will go where you want if you translate a know distance or even easier from this point or end point (autocurser) to that point or endpoint. Welcome to the forum!

I think George answered your question.

I take it your using X2? and when you select an entity it does or does not change color showing it has been picked?

You should see the translate window pop up when you click the translate icon, or Xform/then xform translate in the the top toolbar menu.

Maybe I should wait before upgrading. Seems like there are a lot problems?

well you at least win a beer for all your help!

I unchecked reverse inner chain in my config and the problem seems to have gone away. I think I get it now. inside chain vs. outside chain.

I can only see it backplot in Cimco edit since the toolpath isn't in the file called T.MCX

Del send me some mail dude.

Oh a comedian.

Hi all, I can create surfaces pretty quickly most of the time but sometimes it gets created as an X instead of a nice smooth sweet looking surface. I chain it correctly when it does this also. So that's not the problem. I just delete the X or crossed surface and chain the perpendicular entities. Done and looks good. Am I doing something wrong or it it a bug?

No fixes that I know since I don't have that problem at all. Never have.

Kannon Now that's somethin' I never thought of. In a couple weeks I can try it on the actual electrodes after burning and while steel is being polished. The backplot looks the same when I tried it. Because why not. I figured it's worth a shot. Have you ever tried that yourself?

That's wonderful news. Congratulations.

You guys are awesome for putting in your input. It is most appreciated. I can't use the area as a check surf. since it is machining the area. I did set overlap distance as .0000 with a slightly larger roughing cutter and that helps to where the tool only retracts once in the tpath. All other overlap distances didn't help in this case. Originally it was set to .005 overlap. So htm01 WINS! Thanks a bunch guys!

htm01, I will try that and observe if the tool retracts in the middle of the cut in backplot Thanks

It is set to tip and besides the tool only leaves small divots in several areas. The part looks good otherwise. I wish I could just take extra fine steel wool and blend it in but it's a little too deep for that. Usually that works well and then the orbit of the edm machine also takes out some on the imperfections on the trode. I have the electrodes done in its 1st stage.(With the divots). I will recut the trodes making little windows and cutouts where it gets polished and that's where they really need to look good as it molds a matte finish and a polish in some areas.

Hi all, I have an electrode that I'm machining and it must be a good finish but the 1/32 dia. ball tool in the leftover area is plunging down in several spots and putting a small divot in the electrode surface. The gap is -.005/s and the actual orbit will be .003 so a mark will most likely be seen on the finished steel where a matt finish is required. My plunge rate was set for 10 inches/min. feedrate is 50/min. and it was showing this in the post. DO any of you run into this? My next try will be 1 inch /min on the plunge. I can't do a small incremental distance as it will gouge the part but that's ok as I just lowered the retract distance in absolute. I have no tool deflection on this in case your wondering. Thanks in advance.

Humm , I've got a feelin' you just want your chain to to all around in one click of the mouse. It doesn't because it may have a branch point or you have overlapping entities and it needs to be cleaned up maybe? You could do a construction side view and window the area of the geometry and change its color then set a color mask/ then chain in 3D if that may help you. At least that way when chaining it won't find the branch points and stop part way through. Just a thought anyways