I recently used Titex XD Tech drills to drill 15-20 times diameter deep in Ampcoloy 940 (similar to Mold Max but without beryllium, about Rockewell C 30 and usually not fun to drill) and was most impressed. Anyone have any experience drilling hardened materials with these tools? I've got a job on schedule requiring 15-20 times diameter deep holes in pre-hardened to Rockwell C 42ish 2714 steel and am wondering what kind of tool life can be expected from these tools.

I beg to differ. I've been using a Fadal 4020 with a Fanuc 18i-MB5 control as well as older Fadal machines with 32-MP and 88-HS controls. It (Fadal w/ Fanuc) is no barn burner like the Mazak Nexus sitting next to it or the Roku-Roku sitting behind it, but I've done more than a fair share of surfacing jobs on injection mold cavities that needed nothing more than some scrubbing with a bit of Scotch-Brite to finish them up. But what's it matter anyway? There's nothing wrong with trying to eek the most out of what you already have.

Which is exactly the reason we'll never have a seat of Mastercam lathe. All our lathe programming to date has been done with PC-FAPT. http://www.pcfapt.com Thanks for the feedback folks, it helped make the decision to order an Okuma lathe a smidgen easier.

And, I just found out if we don't order the Okuma we're looking at within the next couple weeks, we won't see it until next year too. Not good news when you've got work up the yinyang and need a lathe right now. But alas, there are worse problems.

The 510C is running as I type. Sweetest machine I've ever used. Sorry Roku-Roku, you're in second place now. That one took 8 weeks to get and we've had it for a couple months now. We just ordered another identical 510C and it's scheduled to arrive sometime mid February.

Cool. Thanks. Does user friendly include programming at the control too?

Seen the lead time on new Mazak's, lathes and mills, lately?

We've been looking at lathes and are starting to lean towards an Okuma Genos. Anyone have any experience with Okuma's "Advanced One-Touch IGF" conversational control and care to comment on it? Our Mori Seiki is programmed with FAPT and Mastercam lathe isn't an option that's going to be considered and am wondering if the Okuma control is really as user friendly as it looks on paper.

We don't have nano. But that works for HPCC on 16i's.

AICC is turned on like this: G05.1Q1R10 Q1 = on Q0 = off R = precision with 1 being the lowest and fastest 10 the slowest and highest. If the control also has APC: GO8P1 P1 = on P0 = off AICC and APC can not be used together.

Mastercam's calculable fields. I've been doing math and conversions (mm -> inch / inch -> mm) in them seemingly forever and those functions are well documented. I just accidentally discovered number and letter drill diameters can be entered by keying in #number or #letter. E.g. #6 returns .204 and #c returns .242. I don't recall ever seeing this documented in nearly 20 years of using Mastercam. I just checked help again and saw nothing about it. Did I just miss it or are souper secrets being kept from us?!

That's the most reliable way I've found to do it since the initial version of X. :shrug: I just wish there was a way to set a hot-key to turn my preferred auto-cursor snaps back on.

System event log or Mastercam event log?

Have your admin mount a drive on the folder Mastercam wants to install in on the C drive and install on that. http://technet.micro...y/cc753321.aspx

X5 Enhancements here: http://inhousesolutions.com/email/images/brochures/X5.Enhancements.pdf

If the Tiger 6 is anything like the Tiger 5, without getting the manuals out I'll venture to say it's possible. These are extremely powerful controls with programing options not available in todays typical machines. When you can mix absolute and incremental cartesian coordinate positioning with polar positioning all in a single block of a program, you've got yourself a VERY flexible control.

I don't know. Presumably it is a limitation in Mastercam's post processor?

I don't recall seeing anything about tap cycles in the XZ or YZ planes in the Sharnoa programming manual. Something like that would have jumped out at me as it'd be unusual. For me anyway. If you were to go with a thread milling route, be aware that arcs in any plane but XY must be programmed in polar coordinates. We've got two posts for our Sharnoa, one for cartesian and one for polar coordinates. According to the post guru at our Mastercam VAR it is not possible to switch between cartesian and polar coords within a single program posted from Mastercam.

Until HST is able to use check surfaces with the ability to leave different amounts of stock on drive and check surfs, I'll be unable to use them more than 50% of the time.

Control Definition -> Tolerances -> Minimum change in arc plane for helix I had similar problems on Fadals (32MP controls) until I set that value to .0002" minimum. Edit: Also, maximum arc radius on Fadal controls is 399.9999" as specified in the machines manuals.

Heh. Colour me retarded. :grumble:

Create curves on all edges of the unflattened trimmed surface and trim the flattened untrimmed surface using those.

Same here. When I'm going to leave a machine run unattended I always check the posted code for offset errors. Same with programs using multiple offsets. The habit goes back to v9 when I used to have lots of offset troubles with transformed toolroads. Those problems have gone away since but the habit remains. Now when it happens it's dealt with just like any other work around. Especially since without a fixed bug list we have no way of knowing whether or not these things ever get fixed. It takes way less time to check the code than it does to rework bad parts or repair damaged equipment.

X3? It's a (confirmed) bug. A spritz of upgrade to X4 will kill it.

There have been times I've had to move the approx start point quite a ways away from where the tool is going to actually start to get it to start where I want. There have also been times the approx start point needed to be almost exactly where the tool is to start. When using a WCS it can be even more of a hit and miss until you get it right type deal. Try moving your approx start point way away from but in the general direction of the start point.