18 hours ago, Matthew Hajicek - Conventus said:

From what I've heard, Partmaker is the cat's pajamas for Swiss and mill-turn.  But weren't they bought by Autodesk?  If so that's a death knell.

Yes. AD bought them. And so far, after the limbo year, the support has been better than Delcam. 

I’m a bit confused here….

Mastercam is a great product but the post is locked up. 
So you purchased Esprit, which has the flaws you mentioned, and may need an expert Esprit programmer to drive it. 
Only when something doesn’t post properly, you will find that Esprit posts are just as locked up as  Mastercam. 
If editable post are the concern, choose Partmaker. I can make a 13 axis, 3 channel control dance like Fred Astaire on meth. 

 

Just now, BrianP. said:

Try this one Zoob.

I fixed it. I had to regen the page. 

How come I get a “problem reacting to this comment” error if I try to like or haha. 

Should I be using a different outline format?

50 minutes ago, Thee Rickster ™ said:

So you don't want help then.....

Nope. Wants somebody to make it good for him. Then call them names. 

Must have come from the Gibbs forum...

The flaw is thinking that any cam system has specific posts right out of the box for a machine 20 years behind the times. 

You did buy a post specific for your machine, right? 

Why would to not want a post catered to EXACTLY how you want a tool change to happen. This is a simple post mod, and You never have to worry about it again. 

It’s not a hack. It’s having a cam system do exactly what you want it to do. 

What are you looking for?

how bout:

M0 (GO GET MANUEL)

 (MANUEL - LOAD TOOL #4)

You could easily do this with a MANUEL ENTRY. 

All you see with returning the userdomain  environment variable is the NETBIOS domain name.

Check the %userdnsdomain% to see the DNS domain. This will show you the fqdn suffix.

The mode 2 "NameSamCompatible" result in the MP query is for backwards compatibility to NT4.0, Win 95/98 environments.

The fact that mode 9 "NameDnsDomain" doesn't return tells me there is an issue with the top level domain suffix, or you are really in a workgroup, not domain.

You can go into control panel -> System and see the Domain and suffix as it is connected.

7 minutes ago, C^Millman said:

Here is what I got;

C:\>whoami /fqdn
ERROR: Unable to get Fully Qualified Distinguished Name (FQDN) as the current
       logged-on user is not a domain user.

That is what I would expect to see from Jeremy. That is why he is only getting the output for mode 2, IMO.

Then, the only way would be to parse the user name out of the local SAM name, or create a domain controller to handle naming conventions.

Edit: or to join an existing domain.

run this in a command prompt:

whoami /fqdn

What does it return?

26 minutes ago, Matt Berube at Ferron Mold said:

Is M255 for GI/Super-GI Radical Mode on your machines?  Is that what you use for everything or do you change it up depending upon the current job?

Yes, we have Misc reals set up for SGI. M255 is default if we don't enter a value. That way we can control for every op.

This is for our Pro 3. Pro 5 uses different values. Still in the M250's, but different.

We turn the spindle on the same for a rigid tap as any tool, then handle the M135 in PTAP.

Here is my PTAP postblock for my makino:

ptap$            #Canned Tap Cycle
      pdrlcommonb
      #RH/LH based on spindle direction

      if rigid_tap, pbld, n$, "M135", *speed e$           #Rigid Tapping
      if use_pitch = 0,
        [
        pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgdrlref, *sgdrill, pdrlxy, pfzout, pcout, pindexdrl,
          prdrlout, *feed, strcantext, e$
        ]
      else,
        [
        if met_tool$, pitch = n_tap_thds$  # Tap pitch (mm  per thread)
        else, pitch = 1/n_tap_thds$       # Tap pitch (inches per thread)
        pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgdrlref, *sgdrill, pdrlxy, pfzout, pcout, pindexdrl,
        prdrlout, *speed, *feed, !feed, strcantext, e$

        ]
      pcom_movea

Gives this output:

N530T53
(10-32 CUTTING TAP)
M6 
M11
G0G54.1P1G90B0X-1.0824Y-5.4004S1600M3
M10
M255
M8 
M26
G43Z8.H1 
T126 
(TAP 10-32 HOLES)
G0G90
M135S1600
G84Z7.135R7.685F50.
X1.1876
X3.4576
Y-6.6004 
X1.1876
X-1.0824 
G80Z8. 
............

On 12/8/2017 at 8:54 AM, Matt Berube at Ferron Mold said:

Next issue is with rigid tapping.

Here is the bad code:

N1220 G91 G28 Z0.
N1230 M01
N1240 T50 M06 (   10-32 TAP)
N1250 (MAX - Z2.)
N1260 (MIN - Z-.4)
N1270 G00 G17 G90 G54 B0. X-3. Y1.125
N1280 G43 H1 Z2.
N1290 G94
N1300 M29 S300
N1310 G98 G84 X-3. Y1.125 Z-.4 R.1 F9.38
N1320 X1. Y1.125
N1330 X1. Y-1.125
N1340 X-3. Y-1.125
N1350 G80
N1360 M05
N1370 G91 G28 Z0.
N1380 M01

What would be the best way to output S300 M3 before the M29?  Should I put it on the G43 line?

The problem we had with code posted above is that the spindle stays off until it reaches the bottom of hole #1 then reverses out and proceeds to tap the remaining holes properly...  So the spindle must be started before the M29 - and I'm told the M29 should be on a line of it's own.

Our A61's don't use M29. They use M135. They are Pro 3. But same with our F5 with Pro 5. That is how our post works too. Have never had issues.

This is from the book.

Quote

M135........RIGID TAP MODE ON
:
S*****;
M135 S*****;
G84 Z_ R_ F_;
G80;
M30;
At the first S command, give the same S code in the M135 block.

This was all well before he left. in 2013. But I'm pretty sure he didn't direct the individual to save the sim session and upload to You tube.

But who is Partmaker's CEO (or AD's now), makes no difference. The policy is set.

We do not allow any proprietary info out the door for support purposes.

By the way, we actually have integrated thing into our Swiss machines that Star actually now offers as options (with permission and still our IP). There is simply no post or machine sim in existence that handles that. But we can. Again, because our software supports user configurations via nethook, post,  or whatever means. That is not possible in psb or other locked stuff. 

4 minutes ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

Hopefully you got some expensive lawyers involved and sued their bullocks off?

Don't know the final extent of it. My last communications were with Hannan Fishman, PartMaker's CEO before it was handed off to higher pay grades than mine. 

Most support calls for cam software goes like this:

Support: send us a Z2G (or whatever format) with the problem files and issues documented. 

Us: sorry, we can't do that. IP reasons. 

Support: TRUST us, we signed an NDA. 

Us: sorry, been there done that. Can we have YOUR source code? We have the resources and an NDA...

Support: .....................click. 

2 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

 

Keep in mind that all the ancillary services were always intended to go through the Reseller, and provide an income stream for them.

ModuleWorks is licensed by CNC Software, for inclusion into Mastercam. This is the "Base Simulation", that everyone gets "for free" inside Mastercam. It runs NCI data, not G-code.

There has been the "ability" to tie a Post to Machine Simulation since about X7. You just had to pay someone who "knows how", and has an agreement with MW, so that they share the money. The customization that is available is pretty amazing. I remember seeing a 6 Axis Gantry that used a big saw cutter for some specialized application. It was fully simulated in the Machine Simulation from ModuleWorks, and the same Post that generated the NC Code from the NCI data, would also write the exact same data to the MWCL file. (move for move). Bottom line was it was successful, and worked for the customer.

Many of the service providers that offer these services are either in Canada or Germany. I do believe that several Resellers from the USA have also been trained in how to tie a Post to the Simulation, but I'm not sure which ones...

 

How does out of country resources balance with ITAR and other customer or government mandates?

But the real deal killer for us is competitive advantage. Us having things that only we have. We make a lot of our money thru IP. The fact that we must have somebody else give us permission to integrate a custom process makes it a no go. We no longer send any of our proprietary info out for support. We learned the hard way, after PartMaker put videos on YouTube of a simulation session for a file we sent to them for support purposes. Less than 30 days after they signed an NDA. It was not pretty.

This is why we won't even consider Mastercam for mill turn.

Even if they had our machines, it appears that user customization is very limited, and you need to buy every machine.

We do things differently than other shops. Our software HAS to cater to our way of doing things to come in our door.

David, while you are in a machine sim session, in the machine tree, you can right click any component and a menu comes up for hide, show, and transparent.

Could be, I haven't done any in 2018.

But in prior versions, I  had those huge tool issues if I started from scratch. But if I started with an XML from a similar machine and then built around it, it worked fine.

I quit trying to figure why....

It's in the XML file.

13 hours ago, DavidB said:

Ok I received a model from a forum member. Thank you.

When I use it MC machine simulator I can not see anything inside the machine. Is there something I'm missing to be able to see inside the closed door?

Cheers

You can actually make the door an axis, and be able to slide it open and closed. Not usefull, but cool.

4 hours ago, JParis said:

That's not uncommon

We requested both Verticals and Horizontal models from our Makino salesman. Within a week we had both.

Couldn't be happier with them.