quote: Sulfur Oil based lubricant, carbide and low SFM carbide tend to be in the 75 - 90 SFMThis has worked best for me except maybe use even lower sfm like 50. I last had to drill about a 7/16" hole 2" deep. peck drill .500 deep, retract and pause. peck drill next .500 deep and pause, etc. then used a solid micrograin carbide straight flute flat bottom cutter to clean up the hole. u WILL get taper. HTH

How much material is left for the .250 ball to cut? What machine r u cutting on? Is it in z, XY, or both?

quote: "I can't find center." "Center is elusive." I understand that on the lathes I'm talking about the control only has X and Z, but shouldn't any half decent machinist be able to straighten out a drill/tap? Yes, the machine has been crashed in the past, which one hasn't? So the tool blocks have been beat up and ground on and the keys are long gone, so what. Fix it. There really is no excuse for this unless the turret is loose and wont repeat when indexing. With our tolerences and types of materials we cut, we have to dial all our tools in "dead nuts". Some lathes have adjustments but most have to be shimmed to dial in centerline in Y. The lathe we have the most problems with is actually a millturn. u can set y and it will float all day so u have to chase it.

quote: CNC lathes use M3's the turret is set so the center line height is with the tool upside down. End of story. They are WAY more rigid than a manual lathe. This is pretty standard. Slant bed turrets run on box ways and it doesnt matter the direction of tool pressure. It doesn't matter which turret u r using; the point is to have the chips going down , not up. u r less likely to get a chip caught. We still have some guys that refuse to change and run with the tool facing up. They run in to problems sometimes and have to clean there window off a lot more often.

We have such a wide range of materials we cut and each part is very unique, I just use the defaults. I could change some stuff and save it but I just haven't taken the time.

quote: The -1.435 still only gets me that one cut to the correct Z depth. The other z depths are the problem. u want to cut .010" past all the floor surfaces violating the surfaces with the EM?

Ya, it definitely is. Production is using UG with Campost right now. WE (the toolroom and model shop) will use X2. A custom post is part of the price we paid. I was told we will also be able to use Campost 17 as well.

input -1.4350 as the Maximum depth and the EM will drop .010 below the bottom of the part.

Go to parameters > Steep / Shallow and check "Use Z depths" then right-click and select "Z = Z coordinate of a point". then select a point at the maximum depth u want. I selected the floor of the middle open pocket.

gms1, What depth do u want it to cut too?

Send me a part and I can take a look at it for ya.

Our production side has half-a-dozen running right now and they love them. They are very accurate and have produced some very complex tight parts repeatably. We have 2 of the bigger models coming but I don't now when we'll get to start cutting chips on them. I was told they went with the Heidenain iTNC530 control because it was the most "robust" for probing. I know the operators dont care for them to much but I think it's because it's because they are not a Fanuc and they hate change.

quote: I do not use Mastercam Solids for anything other than some modification or creating blank stock. All of my modeling is done in Solidworks. +1000 John This combo is the only way to go.

FYI-- If u do and multiaxis work the advanced 5 axis paths wont work with solids.

Thanks, that's what I'm runnin'.

Where did u turn it on? The perameters page? Operations tool? Tool library? If u do it in the tool, you have to go through each op and unselect then reselect the tool to pick it up. FYI I always (well, most of the time) program everything with the coolant off. Then use the "edit common perameters" to turn on coolant settings. HTH

Thad- I agree. I use the display option to minimize what I see and turn on just what I need for that project. I don't believe it would be interactive though (drag-and-drop) as a display option. Obviously if the revised operations manager and display options it could be.

quote: Why I can not copy WCS/cplane/tplane settings ?This is an EXCELLENT question. I would like to know as well. Is it a feature CNC just hasn't gotten around to yet or is it more than that? quote: I agree man, having the Coolant value and the Planes info in the Ops manager tree to allow you to drag-and-drop would be great.I agree this would be very helpful. You need to be careful not to get TOO much info in the tree. Otherwise it all starts blurring together. I think having different color icons for the tools to display if the coolant is on or off would work well and be an easy add-in. JM2C

Robert, We are having the same problem here (5 axis Toyoda & 6 axis White-Sundstrand). We haven't got it to work right on the Toyoda yet, But we did on the Sundstrand w/ OAC. We are using Campost for the 6 axis and modified the macro to get the B rotation right. We are using V9 though on the 6 because we dont have any macros for X or X2. When I find out more I'll let u know.

quote: the control is a iTNC530.What machine is it on? We are getting 2 Hermles with the same control on them.

quote: And if you're programmer you spend half your day getting pi**ed on What do u spend the other half doing?

Thanks a lot guys. Appreciate the info.

Thanks. I'll load it Monday on the raid drives and sometime in the next week or two I'll do some comparisons. Anyone done one yet?

quote: Why, you having a "bug" problem Matt? I just got it. Hey, what can I say, having a baby on Tuesday and not quite all with it if u know what I mean.

Not yet, I am getting ready to install it on a stripe and wanted to know if I should expect any problems. Also curious if anyone has noticed a significant difference doing so. Thanks for any info.