quote: I would venture to say better than 95% of workers have absolutely no clue about what kinds of expenses are incurred as a result of having a single employee let alone a dozen or two. quote: As far as the low dollar wages, please allow me to give an owners point of view: I understand your frustration but this is not a helpful wish for anyone. An employees point of view: An engineer here said that to me not to long ago and I thought he was full of it ( first quote ). Any person who works, owns a house or pays rent, and has kids has a great idea. We pay mortgages,insurances ( house, automobile, health, disability, life etc.. ), have to contribute and manage our own retirement programs ( if we're lucky a small contribution ), pay taxes ( property, excise, water and sewer, sales etc...), utilities, phones and anything else you can think of. Maintainence of house and property. Food and clothing for self and kids. And don't forget the things we now pay for that our parents never had to pay for. Rubbish fees and school sports programs are 2 examples I can name off the top of my head. Now take that inflation has far out paced wage increases, at least since I've been doing this. Look at the prices of real estate, rents, automobiles, college education, health insurance and deductibles to name a few. Try going to a sporting event , concert or on vacation. Costs of things that keep going up as our wages stagnate or fall. We are expected to work harder and longer ( both hours and lifetime ). Have more knowledge and experience than ever before. Be able to multi task. Perform at a near perfect level because mistakes cost the company money. I think it is the workers frustration that is not all that well understood. We may not understand ALL that it takes to run a business but we understand a whole heck of alot more than people give credit for. Alot more than many people understand what it is like to try and live on 17 or 18 dollars an hour. It is no wonder that a whole generation wants nothing to do with this industry. I don't know about other places but here if you walk through a shop the average age has to be over 40. If companies think it is hard now to find good qualified people wait a few more years. Rant over. Whew.

John Sent one a moment ago. See if it does it for you.

Have had it happen here too. Top of stock +.15 cut depth 0. Depth cuts max. .1 finish pass 1 w/.01 depth. Go to back plot does 1 pass. Go back into parameters and depth cuts is unchecked. Tried putting top of stock at 0 and depth at -.15 same thing.

Crayola crayons work the best.

+1 On the OSG 1100 and 1700 series drills. Have used them in a couple of places on different stainless steels. Recomended by the manufacturer no spotting. Saves an operation which of course equals time.

Part machinist, toolmaker, engineer, draftsman, repair technician, inspector, and anything else you can think of to get the job done. It is a position of responsibility and depending on the company size and structure your duties can vary greatly. Underpaid, unappreciated, overworked .

Turk, I too am self taught on Mastercam. I have had the same concerns as you being self taught and never having taken any classes at all. In my currennt position I do all the programming for a small shop, all mills at this time. With that being said I believe that classes are not that important. Classes can only give you a start in my opinion. You can't learn all there is to Mastercam in a couple of 8 hour classes just ask anyone on here. What is important is the willingness to learn, take suggestions, and being open minded. Use the resources availble to you through your reseller with the service contract. They do carry a service contract right? The reseller in our area offers once a month tech days and I've been to a couple of those. The forum here has also helped. Just don't short change yourself because your self taught. Make sure you get everything you want going in the door. Promises are a dime a dozen. Benefits such as sick time and vacation time are negotiable. People with extensive machining and programming backgrounds are getting harder and harder to find. The most common thing I hear when interviewing is that it is so hard to find people let alone good ones willing to work. Good Luck.

quote: Also, have an option to integrate the finish passes for the depth cuts with the finish pass for the multiple passes.I also would like to see a finish feed rate adjustment option on contouring. Haven't seen anything about a finish feed rate adjustment for face milling. We order our stock oversize to be able to do a walk around, then flip and mill in the height. Would like to be able to adjust finish pass feed rate.

Xp service pack 3. Figured it out. In control panel the Mastercam user interface. Switched from Mastercam interface to Windows standard. For some reason I don't understand this causes it. Any help with the second part of my question? Thanks

Mastercam X3 MU1 I don't use the C-hooks all that often but when I went to look at them today I can't get the window to open using Alt-C or the run user apps icon in the tool bar. Something I did or changed ? I do like to mess with stuff, it's how I've learned, so it could easily be something I did. The other part of this is I was searching for how to not carry over a xy stock to leave condition. I did find a post from 2003 with "Use the prmdef.dll C-hook". Is there a way to set this in X3? Thanks

I like using Blank Entity and Un-Blank Entity. I go to Blank Entity, select all, solids and it hides my solids and I'm left with just the wire frame. I also will use this when Mastercam is grabbing more geometry than I want when I am chaining. Just blank the entity do your chain then un blank it after.

quote: I get the feeling management thinks if I do my job right they can get anyone off the streets to setup and run these machines. Sooooo true. That is why at least around here the average age of the machinists in most shops is over 40. I have been promised by a few companies that they would send me to programming school. Got sick of the empty promises and bought a training manual and started to teach myself. You can get a lot out of the books and a curious mind. Play time with even a demo is a great teacher. You may take a little longer to learn something but when you finally figure it out you tend to remember it. If you can program manually then the trick is to just learn how to make Mastercam do what you want. The drawing part was harder than the toolpaths part for me.

quote: Sometimes parts that I have programmed get changed and have a very tight tolerance applied to just a section of an existing contour tool path.Well if your using the same tool for different tolerances hold the tight one and everything else that has a looser tolerance will be in. No need for different D numbers. Otherwise you should add another op anyways with a different tool. Always like to use a separate tool for tight finishing.

You need to edit the post itself. But yeah it is possible to reorder they way the post spits it out.

I think you may be misinterpreting "plunge". I believe what they are trying to convey is that you need to turn the cutter comp on before you start your cut. In some older terminology plunge referred to the tool going into the part not always necessarily meaning "Z". G0 X1.2625 Y-1.56375 G1 X1.2625 Y-1.56375 Z-.375 G41 G1 (D# here) Y-1.56875 F28.8 G3 X1.3 Y-1.6063 I.0375 J0. This is fine. You move into position,feed down in Z,turn cutter comp on moving to X,Y position and away you go. Don't forget your D. I would imagine that this was a later cut as there is no D in this line.

Some controllers require the T# and the M6 to be on different lines. We run Mori Seki's where I work and on some you can group the T# and M6 and on others you can't. It is a controller issue not a post.

If it is the same in X2 as X go to Settings,Configuration click on Screen. In the bottom right corner there is an option to use the middle wheel as Pan or Spin. Choose pan.

I have run both horizontal and vertical and one horizontal/vertical where the head rotated.Both have their advantages. It really depends on the type of work that you get in house. Some is better suited for one more than the other. As far as difficulty I think they are a wash. Only a little different thought process.

Scott, Couldn't agree with you more. As a machinist who has learned Mastercam second I couldn't even begin to count the dollar value of scrap I would have made if I just "shut up and hit the green thing". I have been screamed at for NOT dry running a part. A programmer can pick a wrong line or type in a bad z depth as easy as anyone else. It saves not only parts but tools and machines to say nothing of the safety issue.