Hey Thad, thats a cool trick I never thought of, thanks.

I sure miss the DMS, way better than the Thermwood I'm stuck with now. Just to be fair the Therm is older and been rode hard without any major problems, you just have to work around it's lack of rigidity. We ran the DMS 24/5 for 70k cycles without a hicup. Oh Yeah! like Colin said push for the continuous C axis. Another thing I would suggest is to budget in a rock solid post.

Create point dynamic then break at point.

Taking another peek at the nc in Metacuts although its already running.

I have had a strange event machining a impeller. The vanes were extremely pointed for some reason. Using cut depths for light cuts for the thin points on top worked fine but the same toolpath totaly wiped out the vanes if I tried to avoid machining the top of the vane done by the previous operation. So I adjusted the cut depth above the part and no problem, just some redundant passes. Not sure if that helps with your situation as this impeller had draft and was just using surface contour toolpath.

You could save your verify as stl, then reopen and put a silhouette boundary around it, if you were looking for a cross section as long as no other surfaces were in the way of the projected view. Also you could open the stl as lines and slice it.

Is it a solid? if so you will need to activate the solid selection tool bar, otherwise you can convert solids to surfaces to pick single surfaces.

Reko, Metacuts gives good bang for the buck, just cutting wood/urethane patterns here but clean code is everything. Mostly to see the actual z extends +/- from programmed zero is a great benefit when cramming a part on a machine with limited clearance, I do a lot of layered machineing "stack and whack" using the same operations and just changing the depth limits. The graphics on Metacuts is not pretty but its rock solid.

I use Metacuts to edit the NC, especially if the part has a ton of surfaces which makes regen time crazy long. Place the part negative in z with a known max value positve in z and just keep editing/verify until it fits.

I have progammed both flamer and thermwood 5-axis routers, totaly different animals IMHO, I would prefer to reprogram from the cad file to get clean code.

I added the toggle "display arc center points" to a tool bar to quickly turn them off and on. Its in setting/customize/screen.

Simply right click on the mask function in your dropdown and it becomes only for that selection. Hit clear all to turn off.

Wow! that looks like a mess. This is what I get for just simple path around a 20 x 20. % 20X20 TEST ,MX ; 20X20 TEST - 000500 ; 04-12-08 11:42 G90 G48 S0 ;TCP OFF ; 1/4 RTR 56-625 TOOL - 3 DIA. OFF. - 3 LEN. - 3 DIA. - .25 T3 M06 ; Pivot Length=0. G29X G78 D3 G54 G48 S1 ;TCP ON S17000 M3 M67 ;AIR NOZZLE ON G0 G90 X-.125 Y0. B0. C0. Z1. G51 E.002 Z.75 G1 Z0. F100. Y20. F300. G2 X0. Y20.125 I.125 J0. G1 X20. G2 X20.125 Y20. I0. J-.125 G1 Y0. G2 X20. Y-.125 I-.125 J0. G1 X0. G2 X-.125 Y0. I0. J.125 G1 Z.5 G0 Z1. M5 M68 ;AIR NOZZLE OFF M62 ;VACUUM OFF G48 S0 ;TCP OFF G53 M30 This machine has only one table.

Yep! that machine should been running 3-axis at least before that set guy left, even if it was just cutting air. Here's some sample code for my machine. % XXXX XXXXX ,MX ; XXXX XXXXX - 000830 ; 25-11-08 09:25 G90 G48 S0 ;TCP OFF ; 3/16 RTR 56-618 TOOL - 2 DIA. OFF. - 2 LEN. - 2 DIA. - .1875 T2 M06 ; Pivot Length=0. G29X G78 ; FRONT NOTCH D2 G54 G48 S1 ;TCP ON S18000 M3 M67 G0 G90 X1.3772 Y-.6937 B0. C0. Z1. G51 E.004 Z-1.004 B90. X.9772 G1 X.8772 F100. Z-.904 F250. Y-.6928 Z-.8091 Y-.6862 Z-.7431 Y-.6725 Z-.6746 Y-.6531 Z-.6106 Y-.6277 Z-.5489 Y-.5968 Z-.4904

Hey cnc, I was handed a new DMS 5-axis router and know exactly what your feeling. Is your machine new? If it is the guy that set it up should have offered training for a day or two. The router here uses a xxxxor control set up using TCP, which makes 5-axis programming/part trimming a snap. One thing to add to Colin's great advice is get that post rock solid working through your reseller. We purchased ours and the post guru helped me out alot. Once your post is right you can focus on programming. I found a old V9 sample file of multi-axis trimming a bed liner. That one file got me up and going on my own and its been one @ell of ride! and this forum is the best.

Check this out http://www.emastercam.com/ubb/ultimatebb.p...ic;f=1;t=032157

Ear plugs in Are you using highfeed? if so you should be able to change your angle on the machine dynamics tab. This is found in the general machine parameters.

You can also try cutting a deep channel at the trim edge to give those chips a place to go. I usually seal the mdf anywhere that is not needed to hold down the plastic. Also add o-rings, after that its almost impossible to lift the material off with the vacuum on.

I backed up the whole X2 folder before doing anything. The following info is from my reseller. You can migrate your settings but do not chose to update your machine definations otherwise all your X2 defination files will be overwritten. After installing X3 go to machine definition menu management and remove all the machine def from the right side list "clearly shows incorrect data path back to X2" Then select the machine def you want to add from left side list, you will promted to update and the correct data path to X3 will show.

Thanks for confirming its not me. I did a 3d translate/copy to wcs top and no problem got what I needed. Hmmm cancel maint buy SW oh! then have buy SW maint

The solids layout function seems to be stuck on the top wcs, everything is set/saved to new view. Any suggestions? or has this always been this way, thanks.

Copy works fine until a x-form is done, then only move works using the exact same steps, anyway thanks for checking out. What really bugs me is the use of ref. points with 5 axis curve and drill, pretty much useless but that should be another topic.

Ok, simple test. X-form translate a solid a distance, then try to copy it to another level, not working. Close and reopen MC copy level works fine.

Hi Colin, Seems like it would work off and on in the past and I just quit using it my workflow. Did a search and other users claimed it was buggy. Could be all good now.

Wow! it works or was this fixed already? no matter. Now you dont have to use to x-form work around.