I thought of this too, but rather than ask the question "Is this just a standard chamfer?" I chose to help him better understand the contour toolpath. I assumed he wouldn't use a surfacing toolpath unless he actually needed to.

That is what I planned on using it for. I think I am going to drop the $600 and set it up. Will be a fun little machine for making a pinewood derby car

With Mach3 I would have to change out the boards.

How much is that addon?

Here are a couple threads discussing the contour toolpath... http://www.emastercam.com/board/index.php?showtopic=70259 http://www.emastercam.com/board/index.php?showtopic=70514

The surface finish contour toolpath works fine for this type of surfacing. It's all the the settings. You could try... Using a .500" Ball endmill, setup your tool and the surface parameters. Then move to the finish contour parameters tab. Set the tolerance to .0005". Direction of open contours set to zigzag. Set transition to follow surface. In the lower left check "Order cuts bottom to top". The reason I prefer this is the center of the ball never does any work. You will find you usually get a much nicer finish this way. Just watch for the initial plunge to be outside the material. Click the cut depths button and check Absolute. Right-click in the minimum field and select "Z coordinate of a point". Click the top of your chamfer. Do the same for the maximum depth but select the lower breakout of the chamfer. Whatever value you get by clicking the lower line of your chamfer type after it -.250 and hit enter. You are using a 1/2" ball compensating to the tip so you need to lower this maximum depth setting by -.250" to get the breakout of the ball to cut even with the breakout of the chamfer. These settings will cut air at the beginning and the end of the toolpath since this is a chamfer. But not knowing the angle I can't give you exact figures. From there click the gap settings. Click distance and set this to 1.000". Click the advanced settings button and select "only between surfaces (solid faces)". This will keep the toolpath from wanting to wrap around the end of the part. HTH.

We drilled .020" holes in a cast 718 Inconel parts. First we had to plunge with an endmill because the hole went through on an angle into the OD of a 3" diameter part. I think it was 80 holes per part and we used one endmill for two or three parts, but I can't remember now for sure. We used the tool breakage check on the endmills and drills because you never knew when they were going to go. If you're doing OK in the stainless expect similar results in Inconel. Inconel just likes a tad more aggressive feed and a slightly bigger chip load. But when you get into tooling that small who knows. You can't really play this one by ear, but since it is a production part I am guessing after five or six parts you will know better than anyone here how to run it

Picture this... We drove over 100 miles to see Ted. The game was just a bonus. Ted is sitting there watching the game. We wait patiently til there is nothing going on on the field so we didn't disturb him. Then, this 15 year old kid walks up to him with what I would guess it the largest Ted Simmons scrap book on the planet and nervously asks for an autograph on some of his baseball cards. Ted says in a very p!$$3d off voice "I'll sign TWO!" He scribbles his name on two cards and never even looks his biggest fan in the eye to say a single word. If they were my cards I would have wadded them up and tossed them at his feet along with the rest of the collection. It broke the kids heart. He just wanted to show him how big a fan he was. I felt so bad I went and bought a baseball and walked back up to Ted and had him sign it and gave it to the kid. That ball was worth a lot of money at the time. But it wasn't about money for him. It was about meeting his hero. Who turned out to be an @$$hole. And if my employer wanted to pay me and every moron on the street $75,000/year to program, machine, and clean the toilet I wouldn't cry one little bit! I guess it's all a matter of perspective. But I have never been one to want for too much.

Yeah, I agree.

You mean when you backplot and click the save tool geometry button? I get a wire frame of the tool. Are you using custom tool geometry?

I have been to AAA games. I went to see the Springfield Cardinals play years ago. A friend of mine was wanting to get Ted Simmons to sign some cards and a Baseball so we went to interrupt his day of scouting. Man he was a real @$$. We recently went and watched the Indianapolis Indians play. It was a real good time. I used to collect baseball cards when Nolan Ryan was still setting records. Then they had the big strike and I haven't watched or followed baseball since. I was struggling to make a living and couldn't even afford to go see a game. And they were on strike because 20 million dollars wasn't enough.

Did this guy disappear?

Don't make me Mastercam up a pair of worn out dirty socks Actually I am unbiased though. I gave up on Major League baseball a long time ago.

That's interesting. I am going to have to try that.

Update: We got the 9023 program from our local Renishaw dealer. Probing is a piece of cake now. Woohoo! Thanks Joe.

I leave the lighting at the default settings. I set my surface/solid color to 8 which is a medium gray and my wireframe to 1 which is dark blue. Any geometry I create for containment boundaries or whatever I use the brighter colors like green yellow and red so they stand out on the model.

What are you looking for? A wireframe? Or a program to engrave it? Or what?

Well, sometimes we get a model but no drawing or dxf to use for creating my chains for toolpaths. Some parts are really complex requiring 60 to 70 toolpaths just in one operation. So I need a wire frame to work from and I create it with the curves commands. I use this wire frame for containment boundaries, 2d and 3d contours, etc.

Yeah, I understand that. It's just sometimes I need to put a curve on hundreds of edges. And I rarely get solids to work with from the customers sending these "problem" part models. So I have to work with surfaces. Funny, one customer that we always get crappy surfaced models from actually just sent us a solid. So I tried to put curves on it by using CURVES>>>CURVES ON ALL EDGES. Then it tells me to "Select surfaces, solids, and / or solid faces". But it will not let me select the solid. Any ideas?

That is what I was wanting to know. Just wasn't sure how to ask

Yes that does. Thank you.

It's not that hard to figure out. I mean if is a really complex part with voids and such, and there is the possibility the tailstock is going to crush the part always error on the side of "crush the part"

Ok. I think I kind of understand this. Don't laugh at me... The words "pretract" and "protretinc" are called "what?". So inside the pretract cammand or whatever this is called it says - if nextop$ = 1003 then do this list of things. And "protretinc" which is the actual rotary return as defined below the pretract section is one of those things it says to do. Am I close?

Read this thread... http://www.emastercam.com/board/index.php?showtopic=67317