Create a surface of the chamfer you want, then create a surface blend toolpath, pick the inside and outside edge curves of the surface as your chains and , voila, accurate chamfer. Or, use center compensation for the tool. Then just offset geo at a 45 degree vector by the amount less than the radius of the tool that you want to cut it with. This will work on most shapes.

This issue with ref points needs to be addressed. It is very obnoxious. They are super handy, but can absolutely give you some headaches from time to time. Frustrating to say the least. Thanks for the suggestion to close and reopen the file. This will alleviate my blood pressure issues for today.

Go with the sager, you can value engineer them a little better I think. Mine came in at $2800, I didn't take the slider all the way to the right, but I did do very well I think for a 15". NP8268-S 1 $2,779.00 $2,779.00 Display 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Matte Finished Surface (1920 x 1080) Zero Dead Pixel Insurance Guaranteed no dead or partially-lit pixels for first 30 days of purchasing - Special Promotion Offer! Video & Graphics Card Nvidia Quadro K3100M Graphics with 4GB GDDR5 Video Memory [$500.00] CPU Processor 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4810MQ Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.80GHz) - Special Upgrade Promotion Offer! Thermal Compound IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU - Special Promotion Offer! Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded ) [$65.00] Memory 32GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 4 X 8GB [$270.00] mSATA SSD RAID Storage Options Info RAID-0 Storage ( Data Strip - Requires mSATA SSD Slot 2 with identical capacity as mSATA SSD Slot 1) mSATA SSD Drive Slot 1 250GB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA3 SSD - as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C) [$200.00] mSATA SSD Drive Slot 2 250GB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA3 SSD in RAID configuration [$200.00] Hard Disk Drive 1 750GB 7200rpm SATA2 Hard Drive Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case 6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software - Special Promotion Offer! Wireless Network Card Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 AC Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module - Special Promotion Offer! Primary Battery Smart Li-ION Battery Pack Integrated Security Device Fingerprint Reader Microsoft Office Microsoft Home & Student Office 2013 ( Includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. ) [$145.00] Warranty Sager 1 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty Good luck on your quest for a new comp.

No probe. But it does have a 31i-A5.

Guys, I am looking for a little advice on a quick and somewhat painful, but good learning experience about calibrating a 5 axis machine to get it back to an acceptable level of accuracy. Granted we are talking a Head/Head router, and it cuts wood. So the ball park I am looking for is <.05mm. Right now I know I have some issues because if I back bend the B, I am about .25mm lower than if I am B positive. I understand the geometric issue going on here, but am wondering if there is a way to use a ball bar to identify these errors in a somewhat painless manner. I have a QC20-W ball bar at my day job that I can borrow if I need. Also, I do know most of the parameters that need to be adjusted to get some of this stuff in, but am just looking for some general guidance on the subject. The owners of this machine have crashed this machine and their other one numerous times, have no idea what they are doing, are getting better, but don't understand calibration to save their lives. Last time they whacked it, the b pivot distance was off by .3, which caused all sorts of issues. Their fix was to just fix the b with a rotational shift. They showed me the parameter they changed, don't remember off hand, but it was not grid shift, I recall it being 2nd home... Not sure how the MTB has things set up in this cast. This of course is all frustrating when you are trying to hold <.1 in wood, nothing is centered, or it is coming out small off the rotary table turning operation, and you have a hard time measuring that tight as there are very few square or parallel faces to measure from. Any experiences you guys would like to share on the subject. Husker

I was thinking of msurf... Got my brains scrambled a few times since I last tried using morph between curves.

Change the motion type in gap settings.

Make sure ignore surface normals is unselected.

Change your hasp settings to look for the hasp via network, and update your nethasp.ini file to look for your computers host name. This get the delay down to as minimal a time as you can have with a nethasp. It would be nice if CNC software would go to a different system with the nethasp setup, something more like solidworks, where you can check out a license which will return itself on a predefined date, you can then go offsite without the worry of your hasp getting stolen along with your laptop.... Or when you work with a nethasp normally, and can't get internet where you happen to be working, or where you might want to be working. Best of luck. Husker

What is jump programming?

Works fine using either a VPN or port forwarding setup. I prefer port forwarding setup, then you can hit it from any computer and don't need to VPN. But this has security risks, so one must understand how to mitigate those. You will have a variable ping lag (1 to 2 seconds usually) whenever you right click in the operation manager for that menu to pop up, same as when at work on the nethasp, just a little slower. Otherwise, is no slower because from there it is all in the hands of the local computer. Husker

Guys, Thanks a lot for the advice. I certainly do appreciate everyone's comments and opinions. We all know how difficult it is to decide what to buy when it is our money and our time we are playing with. When doing research before I had not really put much thought in to Sager. Thanks for reiterating them. One can definitely get much more for the money. Before I pull the trigger... The only sticky point I have with purchasing a sager is a docking station. I really like the dell docks, they just plain work, no questions asked, pop it in there, set your resolutions and whatnot and you are good to go. So I ask of all you Sager users, what have you done dock-wise when you are working in the office? What docks work well, and aren't finicky? How are they connected? At the moment I am at about the $3000 mark for a pretty kick butt laptop. Appreciate it in advance. Husker

So, not to beat this subject to death, need some advice. Been reading around, and have successfully done nothing but confuse myself. My daily driver (corporation owned boat anchor) was and will be again a Dell M6600 (just go stolen from my car). It had a quadro card with 2gb ram, slow poke HD, and 12 gigs of slow ram. Running win 7 64 bit, and x6 MU3 I have been doing some side work programming some 6 axis routers to make some gun stocks. Fun work. Anyway, with the above config the main multisurf toolpath takes about 50 minutes or so to regen at an acceptable stepover (2.5mm) and an along distance of .5mm. This produces almost enough points for some very smooth tool motion. I have found the more code you can throw at the machine, the better it does. Usually ends up somewhere around a 30Mb nci file. or about 8mb of nc code all said and done for about an 8 -10 minute run time. This regen time is completely unacceptable from a productivity standpoint. I can't do anything with X6 while this path is regenerating. Questions: 1. If we pay the maintenance and get up to date(will probably do this anyway), will the multiaxis paths regenerate in the back ground in X7 or X8? 2. How much faster would one think this would regen with a solid state drive and say 16-32 gigs of ram? 3. Does anyone have a particular go to laptop that they would go buy for this work, or at least be able to point me in the direction of exactly what specs not to cheap out on, or how to get them without shelling out an arm and a leg? I have not decided what my budget is, but considering I am working a second job consulting, that is cash I don't need per say to pay bills, I don't mind throwing a very good chunk of my first check from my first customer into a proper tool to get work done more efficiently. This might help me sleep more at night... I was thinking, more hoping, not to exceed $3000 after a few monitors, dock and peripherals to make me more productive at home. I would be willing to spend more, if, I can get some hard facts on how $ turns into regen times. I can send out sample files when I get around to making some that won't violate my NDA, will be simple to make, just need my work machine back to benchmark it on. Currently trying to make benchmark file for a friend on my old desktop i used to use and have been waiting an hour for a low tolerance opened up file to regen with no success. Guess I won't be using this machine, and know what won't work... Thanks, Husker

Last I knew the MPMaster does horizontals and transforms very well....

When they say lathe it really isn't. The machine is a 5 axis router, with a 6th axis mounted to the table. See video below. The "turning" is just a multiaxis path using the rotary and a mill. See video below. All that being said, the post writer got back to me just haven't had time to sit down and do any testing... This is for a side job, not my day job. Thanks, Husker

There is no such thing. You sir should know better...

Well I think i nailed it down to a specific area in the post, just have no idea how to fix it yet as I have not done much with altering motion output. See attached PDF and Z2g links, they outline the problem pretty well. https://dl.dropboxus...ING PROBLEM.Z2G https://dl.dropboxus...nge Problem.pdf

Ron, I will throw together a simple .z2g this weekend and send it over. I do not know if the post is unlocked for dealers, that being said, I need to ask, but I don't know if it was bought through MLC or not. The post was bought from the machine tool builder who is in italy. I have worked MLC in the past and have worked with Jeff White on a different post, sharp guy, but not sure if they will be willing to help out or not. I suppose the best thing I can do at this point is get a .z2g together and see if anyone will bite here, as well as send it over to italy and let the builders dealer try to sort it out as well. I think long term it will be best to get up to speed on 5 axis posts and develop one for it myself, as this machine has a rotary as a "6th" axis, and it is difficult to deal with at times switching between A axis vs BC axis modes, seems to me there would be a way to preread the NCI and see what would be the best output based on angle ranges, or use planes and do one or the other based on if you are in an orthogonal orientation. Thanks for chiming in! Husker

Another thing to note is that the rapid along the spindle axis to feed plane is not there and won't output even when no tilting is going on.

Guys, I am just getting into five axis, anyway. I have a situation that is quite annoying, and I cannot for the life of me figure it out. This post we purchased from our machine tool builder is a mess..... Anyway, I can't figure out if this problem is with me, mastercam, or the post. Description: Between any and all rapid re-position back to feed moves, say for a depth cut on an open chain, when I have the head tilted to be perpendicular to the chain plane, it erases the clearance start point see code below. Now I think I just figured out what it is doing, just not sure what the best course of action is to fix it. Currently the post is outputting everything in machine xyz. TWP is setup in the post, but is turned off currently, and is a global post setting. I am thinking of putting it on a misc int, and turning it on as needed. at that point not sure where i would put the setting to toggle in the post. How have you all dealt with this situation in the past? Z32.047 X828.769 Z31.612 G1 X828.099 Z18.701 X431.347 Y.024 Z37.975 X412.373 Y.025 Z38.96 G0 X412.961 Z50.28 G1 X827.947 Y0. Z15.777 X431.195 Y.024 Z35.05 X412.221 Y.025 Z36.036 G0 X412.809 Z47.356 G1 X827.795 Y0. Z12.852 X431.043 Y.024 Z32.126 X412.069 Y.025 Z33.111 G0 X412.657 Z44.431 G1 X827.643 Y0. Z9.928 X430.891 Y.024 Z29.201 X411.917 Y.025 Z30.187 G0 X413.135 Z53.64 should be Z42.034 X828.769 Z31.612 G1 X828.099 Z18.701 X431.347 Y.024 Z37.975 X412.373 Y.025 Z38.96 G0 X413.739 Z65.26 X829.396 Y0. Z43.668 G1 X827.947 Z15.777 X431.195 Y.024 Z35.05 X412.221 Y.025 Z36.036 G0 X413.587 Z62.336 X829.244 Y0. Z40.743 G1 X827.795 Z12.852 X431.043 Y.024 Z32.126 X412.069 Y.025 Z33.111 G0 X413.435 Z59.411 X829.092 Y0. Z37.819 G1 X827.643 Z9.928 X430.891 Y.024 Z29.201 X411.917 Y.025 Z30.187 G0 X413.654 Z63.626 Now I think I just figured out what it is doing, just not sure what the best course of action is to fix it. Currently the post is outputting everything in machine xyz. TWP is setup in the post, but is turned off currently, and is a global post setting. I am thinking of putting it on a misc int, and turning it on as needed. at that point not sure where i would put the setting to toggle in the post. How have you all dealt with this situation in the past? Thanks in advance, Husker

Unless your machine doesn't have the G95 option..... Sigh

Another thought is to change your coolant. Some are much more friendly to sealants. We changed coolants in a previous shop once. Not a single leak worth mentioning to all machines leaking like a dried out wooden gutter barrel in a matter of a week. Not an easy fix, but something to consider. Gutter sealant has seemed to work best. But I have found with application of any sealant that you really need to pull the joints apart and get a thin bead in the opening, then bolt tight and let rest for at least 24 hours before letting her rip. Thinner and tighter the gap, and the lesser amount of sealant you use typically it will last the longest. Being inside the joint it is not susceptible to people flexing the sealant and putting holes in it which just just oil under it and cause failures at an exponential rate. Husker

Why don't you do it as a sub and use the machine coordinates to rotate the path. Simply tracking the center of the part to center of rotation vector can yield you a new work shift if you are not on pallet center. Look up some of the older Center of Pallet rotation macro discussions. But, if your part is on pallet center than you can just can just G91 G10 L2 P1 B30. between subs until you are done then restore your shift at the end. Why make it more complicated than it needs to be? I know could easily code in the needed looping into manual entries and have it post out hand edit free. Just a thought, though it would be nice if Mcam would just do what our minds will it to.

Is there any way to get the tool to interpolate the toolpath like in the old backplot instead of just jump from endpoint to endpoint. Sometimes when checking clearances it is easier to do it with backplot and sweep it past the sticky point so you know how much clearance you have. Sometimes your tool models and setups aren't as close as you might think.

Guys, I was fed up with legacy coolant and needed more outputs, easiest way for me to make it work like I wanted was to switch to x style coolant commands. All is good, except one problem. When I index my right angle head / change work planes in a null tool change situation, I need to save the coolant states, turn them off, index, and then apply the coolant that goes with the next op, or if there is no difference, just turn it back on the approach. Does anyone know how to do this with x style coolant. Thanks, Husker