I have been using Mastercam for the past 15 years. My experience started in plastic injection molds for shoe outsoles, and for the past 10 years I have been designing and manufacturing milling fixtures and wood veneer pressing tools for the automobile interior design industry. Having spare time on my hands, I would like to offer my CAD/CAM programming knowledge. Any ideas on how I can go about doing this. Would there be companies interested in outsourcing this kinds of services? Thank you, Farid

Jay, Is this trial version from Predator downloadable? Thanks, Farid

I am using V9 Level 3. A customer of mine wants me to modify one of his existing milling fixtures used on a 5-axis router. The job requires the addition of pneumatic 90 deg rotating clamps to improve the part hold. I milled the original fixture, so I have the CAD for it. I requested their .NC file thinking I could reverse post it, so I could backplot and verify if the tool or spindle would crash with the new clamps. The control on their machine is Siemens. I do not use the multi-axis toolpaths at the moment and I can´t find a way to reverse post the file. Is there a reverse post I couild use? Does anyone have information I could use? Thank you

One of my Mastercam seats is still working with V8, and recently we are experiencing data loss when saving. The problem apparently only occurs while in metric configuration. It doesn´t occur everytime you save, but it happens at the worst time. After you save the file, if you try to open it again, nothing comes up in the screen (all geometry is lost as well as toolpath operations). In windows the file shows 0kb file size. We are running under Windows 2000 professional. If this has happened to any of you, please help me out. Regards, Farid Hode

Sorry, I know this is not a Mastercam question, but I hope one of you guys knows about the subject and can help me out. I have built basic extrusion blow molds for bottles in the past, and depending on the resin to be used I have applied shrinkage % according to literature I have. This has worked great in the past. My problem is that I am now building a tool for stretch blowmolding of PET preforms. The cavity is that of a 1 liter bottle, and I don't know if I should apply shrinkage or what % to use for that matter. I hope you guys can help me. I am in a desperate situation as I am about to machine and deadline is near. Thank you in advance, Farid Hode [email protected]

Andris: This is what you should do, 1.Make a 2d operation of the logo with the final depth cut set at z0. So if you are using depth cuts, they will be Z positive. Set the clearance, retract, and feed heights all well above the depth cuts. 2.Instead of projecting onto an arc, make a revolved surface out of the arc. This surface should represent the shape of the final cut. The highest point on the surface should be below z0. This way you can use SURFACE-FINISH-PROJECT. 3.In the Projecting operation, set clearance to 0.1 abs, retract to 0.1 inc (you can change this to a higher # if you see it is gouging in rapid moves after retracting and moving to a different point), and feed to 0.1 inc. Select the 2d operation, and activate the add depths option. This definetely should work for you, I do this all the time on detail work on my shoe sole molds. If not, send me the file and I will gladly take a look.

I am trying to uncheck the create arcs option in the Filter settings inside my config file in V8 so that I don't have to do it in every operation I create. But it does not work, it still appears activated. In V7 it works fine. Am I missing something? I am using V8.1.1

Ketil, That is exactly what I am doing. Once I finish programming the first one, I XFORM-SCALEXYZ-MOVE the geometry.

I make plastic injection molds for shoe soles. I have to make one mold for each shoe size. I normally program the smallest size and then the rest are done scaling both the geometry and toolpaths. I am using V8.1 so I figured that full associativity would do the job. Well the thing is that after programming the first size and scaling to the second size, associativity is lost on surfacing type operations. I have to reselect the geometry for them. The strange part is that when I scale to obtain the third and rest of the sizes, associativity is not lost anymore. Am I doing somthing wrong or am I missing something?

Thank you Andreas, I will contact them.

I am trying to teach Mastercam to non-english speaking guys. The only translated material I've got are some old V6 manuals. Does anyone know of spanish traing videos or books?

Hola! Hello everyone! CADCAM, you are right. I have been coming into this forum since it started. I sometimes have questions for you guys, but I think I was so lazy in the past to register. I am from Honduras, Central America. I run a company (INPLADI) that specializes in the manufacture of injection and blow molds for the plastics industry. Most of the molds we make are for shoe outsoles. We also make CNC precision parts like fixturing for automobile interior design industry. I started using Mastercam back in version 5.5. I really look forward to sharing my experience with all of you and hope I learn a lot too from yours.

Hey!! I've been reading this forum for so long now, never got around to comunicate with you guys. Looking forward to learning from your experiences, and maybe getting help from you with my problems. I'm located in Honduras, C.A. and my company specializes in injection and blow molds for the plastics industry. We have been using Mastercam since v5.5.