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Aaron Eberhard

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Everything posted by Aaron Eberhard

  1. Yeah, apparently he hasn't improved himself at all in the past 4 years: Ah well, I hope someone learned something for this thread
  2. ALT+F12 (that icon) is set your center of rotation, but that's for the 3d controller/rotation controller (3d Connexion). The default behavior is to rotate around the Origin (0,0,0). If you set a new rotation center for your mouse view, but if you need to "reset" it, you can choose a new rotation center and hit "o" to snap to the WCS origin. It will not affect your middle mouse button rotation. Your middle mouse button rotation will either: 1) If you press the middle mouse button and there's geometry under it - it will rotate around whatever point is under the mouse cursor when you hit the button. 2) If you press the middle mouse button and there's no geometry under it - it will rotate around the center of graphics view. If you'd like to map it to your 3d connexion dialog, it's called "pick rotational center"
  3. Exporting operations with geometry only really works if you're using simple wireframes and surfaces, at least, that was the way it was the last time I tried a few years ago. The solids & associated toolpath don't seem to survive the trip. If I were you, I'd just copy the original file, delete op1, then merge in the new Op1 geometry and program that...
  4. Sorry, I'm not sure how to be more clear? I use a Milling > Contour toolpath, then, for selection, I used Solid Chaining on the default behavior:
  5. Welcome to the forum! If I understand the questions correctly, the easiest way would be to use a Contour toolpath doing a Y axis cross: Obviously, you'll either need to model in fillets or edit the chains or start/end points for the solid edge to avoid crashing into the model, as your part is impossible to cut (without an EDM) as it stands. Did I interpret your question correctly?
  6. Don't forget Alt+F1 (Fit)!
  7. Oh, hey, I have been building a YouTube channel a bit as well. I recently had a chat with Cristian from Aether Machining. He reached out to me because of this forum. It might be a useful introduction if you haven't been through the easy way to make a Unified toolpath:
  8. Hmmm... an MX-420 would probably look great in my garage!
  9. While you're waiting, if you feel like being IT, you can hit Start menu, start typing "computer management," then, go to Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Applications and see if there's any errors in there that might point you the correct direction. For example, on my system, I know how to crash Cimco editor. It's not Cimco's fault, but it looks like I need to reinstall the C++ redistributable, I just haven't gotten around to that yet... That's really convenient, because that's the only app I have that I can get to crash reliably which made a great screenshot: Look at the Faulting Module Path, and start a googlin'.
  10. I would love to hang out with you for a day! What machine do I need to buy?
  11. Agreed on all counts. Although when I'm docked at my desk, I have my laptop living on this stand: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRWE5AX/ The biggest problem I've seen with laptops and thermal throttling is if you get a "business" chassis. Just look at the difference between a 3561 and a 7760's chassis: Right after I started Vector, a friend lent me the 3561.. It got HOT when programming, and I had to keep it on a cooling pad to keep it running at peak speed, especially if I was doing something like a teams meeting where I was sharing my screen it would kill the processor Ghz due to thermal throttling. On a cooling pad, it ran great. Now, with my 7760, I don't need to keep it on a cooling pad and it does fine in any condition, but I just kept the cooling pad, because, hey, why not? Cooler is happier, right?
  12. Another overlooked thing is to schedule some time with your machine tool's AEs. Have them explain the different options to you on your machine and train you on the way it has to be applied. Does DWO have to be applied before TCPC or after? Does your machine use G43.3 vs. whatever, how are the DWO/TCPC parameters stored & manipulated on your machine, etc. Even once you have an understanding of what's possible in theory, a lot of times getting it going can be a bit daunting until you understand how things flow. A half a day or day of training with them is worth its weight in gold.
  13. Thanks for posting the solution... I'm pretty sure none of us would have guessed it! I had a similiar problem years ago, a CTRL key on my keyboard started failing after 10 years of trusty service... But it was intermittent.
  14. A properly set up tool library and a large enough magazine/storage on the machine is worth its weight in gold! The job setup/fixture setup/etc. will be really valuable if it ever becomes a "op setup" sub-group of the same machine. Right now, it's just in the way... That's the big benefit of doing separate machine groups right now. Every time you want to change which fixture you're using (op10 to op20, etc.) you have to go into Machine Group properties which can take a minute or two on a large file by the time you load it, change whatever you have to change, then get back out and it sits there flashing changing whatever it's changing.
  15. I don't want to say "better" or "worse" here, but I find keeping everything on one machine if possible is a bit easier to manage. They share a common tool library, edit common parameters, etc. etc. The other thing I find is that unless the setup is really simple, it's more difficult to express how to set it up exactly only using the comments. I prefer to leverage the crap out of Viewsheets, levels, etc. so when you click on a viewsheet, you get the information presented exactly how I want it. I take a screenshot of that and attach it to each setup sheet. For example, I have a an assembly of 4 parts I just programmed for a customer, each part has a minimum of 2 operations. The parts are all aluminum that get riveted together. The customer didn't want me to spend time specifying the specific tools because they have a lot of stock(i.e., program for a generic .5 3FL .030R Endmill, not a Helical 82xxx, they'll figure out exactly which endmill fits my specification). For the most part, each of these parts is going to share common tools, all happening on the same machine. Since I knew the customer was going to have to edit the tools to fit what they had on hand, I didn't want them to have to edit the same tool in 12 separate machine groups. So to do that, I set up a view sheet with each part's op. I put a Note on the level with that fixture, and attached it. Here's one of the simple brackets, this was at the end of the setup sheet (the top specifies what stock size to use, etc): On the other hand, I did have a customer that wanted each Op as a separate file...
  16. Have any of you guys been in touch with qc about this?
  17. My gut reaction says it's either graphics card related (maybe hooked into onboard video instead of the real video card?) or a windows scaling thing.
  18. It looks like your stock has been shifted to the left quite a bit. In my experience, this is due to editing the job setup (often a few times!), for example, picking different pickoff positions or editing the cut off tool, which will induce some incorrect numbers. The easiest thing to do is to delete the pickoff/cutoff folder (right click on the POCO group in the Toolpath Manager > Groups > Delete), then create a new POCO op. See if that clears it up.
  19. Don't want to speak for Ron, but pretty much the only time I ever made a new machine group was when I had to switch machines. Now that the workflow has... er... improved...
  20. If you click on the wrong geometry and go down the wrong branch, don't Unselect (U) as that throws away the whole selection. Use Previous (O) to go back one step. You can iterate really quickly via the keyboard by using X (NeXt), J (AdJust), O (PreviOus) to just try your various options if there's ambiguity. I'm not sure what the keyboard shortcuts would be in Finnish, of course
  21. You can just click on the geometry itself you want when it's at a branch and it will continue chaining along that path... Can you post an example file of it not working? Mine was just a couple of lines & arcs I made in a second.
  22. That is an amazing guide, James. Thanks for posting it!
  23. Yep, Red is the vector of the last chain, Blue/green is the alternate to that vector. It makes a bit more sense if you see it compared to more obvious splits:
  24. He hasn't visited in a few years, so I'll guess at his answer. I don't think it's auto-generated. I think it's part of his setup process, make a level that has all of his pallet information, clamping, and those lines & text.

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