On 9/13/2018 at 1:17 PM, Newbeeee™ said:

 

For small tools (drills and taps) I used to use 10mm dia, and ream for the shanks and Loctite 603 them in. None ever came out and I've done it for 25 years.

So you would ream a shank size hole and simply count on the Loctite to hold? Pretty slick if you ask me...

 

I am wondering if any has info on heat shrink tooling sizes.

Yesterday I was in a pinch and needed to get a tiny thread mill down into a deep pocket.

I found a 3/8 diameter rod, drilled and reamed a .1235 hole, used a propane torch to heat it and slipped the 1/8 shank cutter into it.

It worked out quite well, and I will try probably do it on a few other tools, but really I am looking to know the sweet spots with sizes.

If the hole is too small, no amount of heat will ever open it up enough for the endmill to fit, if it is too big it may not hold the endmill causing it to pull out or spin?

Any one do this type of thing? Recommendations on tolerances, material for the holder etc...

Me and others here have wondered that for years.

I am really curious to hear some responses!

Yes, I sensed he was referring to this.

The group manager has caused me nothing but problems back many versions ago.

As toolpath manager would lose focus resulting in what you see below.

Corporate told me to purge the group manager, that usually worked,  and that problem went away some versions ago.

Honestly, wish I could disable it!

21 hours ago, C^Millman said:

Known issue erase your groups and you should not see it again.

Hmm. I certainly believe that it will work. Thanks,

As far as groups go, who uses them? I understand that Mastercam uses them in the background with things like "results" 

But to me, they seem worthless, as you cannot select them in any toolpaths? AFAIK.

Is it something that carried over from old versions of Mastercam where there were limitations on how many levels you could use?

I ask all of this because I remember having lots of issues with group manager having many groups which in turn made toolpath manager act bizarre. The two of them do not get along well. 

It seems that they share some similarities (file locations or ??) as you cannot have Machine groups, toolpath groups or groups called the same name. At least that is what I recall.

Throughout my day I can get new mystery planes created that usually mimic "gview"

I thought that maybe it was a hotkey, but there are none assigned to it, it gets annoying as I can easily have 10 appear in a few hours.

Any ideas??

Mastercam 2017

42 minutes ago, nickbe10 said:

I have folders for part numbers (aerospace).

Each folder has an "archive" sub-folder.

Whenever I make an update I first save a copy to the archive folder and rename it with the date it was updated (p/n_updated xx-xx-18)

I then make the update in the original prog. in the p/n folder. This gives me a way to trace my updates if I run into a problem later....many ways to skin the cat, just need some way of keeping your updates in some sort of traceable form and separated from your current prog.

Is this a company mandated procedure, or your way of going about it?

With the software much easier to learn and the cost more affordable as opposed to 20+ years ago, it seems that there are now many more Programmer/Operators. 

How do some of you handle archiving programs in a manner to be able to repeat that process, as it seems that programmer/operators are more after getting the part done than trying to keep files clean, organized and filed properly.  

Enter and esc still works when creating lines and arcs but not in other areas like transform within Mastercam 2018, no consistency and It totally annoys the hell out of me!!!

This worked for ages in previous versions and for me keyboard functionality is essential. 

But this all looks to be fixed in 2019, but I WILL NOT upgrade. historically one thing is fixed but another will be broken. Too painful to transition so often

On 2/18/2018 at 7:21 AM, Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot said:

Dear fellow machinist  there were times when  that was exactly so .
I used to run some very antic machine  it had no home and no offsets

Sadly what happened is that modern machinery came in but they continued to not use work offsets.

Legacy files are not important to most, but at my company (OEM) with a deep history of over 50 years, it is.

We are always being called and asked to make replacement parts for customers from around the world.

We have had a few issues, but most of the time it is flawless. So it is good to hear that Mastercam takes this into consideration.

On a side note my old boss used to brag about program M-1, still in use to this day, gets pulled out maybe once  a year, created back in 06/06/1981.The setup sheet was written on some loose leaf paper, yeah it is a only a little bit of drilling, but it gets the job done and has run and been proven many times before.

Old school cool in my eyes and a hats off to those early pioneers of NC programming! 

15 hours ago, nickbe10 said:

It certainly doesn't look anything like an APT geometry file, with all the "NUL" characters removed it might be different, but it doesn't look like that would leave any "useful format", but then is a .GOE file a Geometry (.GEO) file? Another possibility would be a .CL (Cutter Location) file, but I would expect to see more Real Numbers.......more like an .NCI file.....

Well this has turned fascinating hasn't it........

Yes, It is all foreign to me. 

The latest is that sales dept is in contact with the customer, they are proposing a new and improved design?

That will make my life easier!

52 minutes ago, nickbe10 said:

I might be mistaken, but it looks like a Text driven system, APT being another example. If so the  files will be in text, try opening in a text editor........

That would make sense as the GUI interfaces didn't really start until the mid to late 80s.

I gave it a crack, not seeing it here on my end.

Up to a challenge? I attached one of the six files below.

j8571c6.goe

58 minutes ago, jeff said:

Get the google translate app for your phone. 

I use it all the time for Japanese, German and Italian prints that our customers keep giving us. 

Yeah that app is sweeeet!

Pretty mind blowing to see it translate in "live"

2 minutes ago, gcode said:

I tired Wikipedia to learn the history of the company, hoping someone had

bought them out and there was still a corporate entity with some relation to TAMBOY, but

Wiki has got nothing that I could find 

I dug into it, found a company that took over TAMBOY, I reached out to them and I am waiting to hear back.

https://www.cgsys.co.jp/en/co/history_CE.html

25 minutes ago, Newbeeee™ said:

15" monitors and dot matrix printers were bloody expensive back in the day!

Actually 14" and we still have it sitting in a cabinet for some reason, also for the 250k we got a punch tape puncher and reader!!

At one point in time, we got an upgrade to a windows based version. The old original system is in boxes upstairs.

10 minutes ago, Newbeeee™ said:

NCplot will take an nc file and you can save back out as a dxf. Whether that will help in any small way?

Thanks, I have NCPlot and use it all the time to reverse engineer all of the simpler 2D cuts, with the 3d toolpaths I would be in way over my head trying to recreate surfaces trying to match some of the complex shapes that I encounter.

I did find a manual on this TAMBOY software, ugh but I can't read Japanese?

I heard my old boss mention that a turnkey system of this was $250k back in the late 80's.

1 hour ago, chipman said:

 There are native .tam files, nc files, and .geo files. 

1

Wow, I read it wrong, the extension is .goe not .geo.

Either way, I tried opening with Mastercam and Solidworks with no luck.

21 minutes ago, gcode said:

what is the OS??

Windows NT

We are an OEM, it really is our responsibility to have the surfaces. But things were always run a little different here. They designed the mold in 2d Autocad and then the programmer whipped up surfaces and programmed toolpaths. yes I know....

Up until 12 years ago, they used this TAMBOY and Camax to do all the mold programming, Then we pulled the plug on that and got Mastercam in, also during that time we acquired Solidworks software and they are supplying me with complete models. 

Our customer is in the former Soviet Union, they have an existing mold that they would like to replace, they do not want to stop production. 

31 minutes ago, gcode said:

In my google search, a Japanese CNC forum came up

The google translation was pretty rough, but there are still people in Japan

using the software ...  maybe you could look for help there???

Yeah, I found a few companies in Japan that seem to still run it.

I sent out an email asking for any info, with no response yet

We got into the system, and I see plenty of various file pertaining to this job, but it almost seems that TAMBOY is not installed as I searched in the start menu and throughout all the drives for an .exe with no luck. There are native .tam files, nc files, and .geo files. 
I will try to open some of them and see what comes up.

For the most part on recreating these parts, I can use the 2d .nc files to reverse engineer but I have never done it with 3d shapes as it is nearly impossible.

We have discussed using the old toolpaths, they do work but run very primitive, the finishes are inferior and there was tons of benchwork needed. and it is all in incremental, and when I say incremental, each and every tool needs to start at part zero and 1 inch above, as the early programmers here did not know that work offsets existed??

Many here do not want to run the programs as they are quite goofy in so many different ways.

Right now I have the IT dept trying to crack password into Windows NT, but yes I am going to see if it is as simple as file open, save as? crossing my fingers!

We have an old customer wanting us to remake some pricey parts.

All of the surface geometry is in TAMBOY, this is a system that this company purchased back in the 80's early 90's.

We have the computers sitting here, but nobody knows how to run it. 

The guy that did, died of a massive heart attack a few years back.

It is a Japanese software, no one was ever trained on it. the ones that did know how to run it are all retired/dead

Really looking to see if anyone out there could give us a hand? I know it is a long shot.....

Looking to see if anyone out there knows how to use TAMBOY cam software.

Yes there is a new tick box in the config file, but the problem is that it does not stick.

Open a file, click the tick box, save your config, re-open that file or any file and it reverts back??