HardMill, Just this past week a few managers were discussing this issue in a meeting with myself and another programmer at our shop. The Mgr said, " I bet we could contract out our CNC Programming and save a ton of money..No salarys, no MasterCam, No Maintenance, no P.C.s etc. I took my calculator and quickly did some basic math: My anual salary divided by 2080 hours, then add 10 hours of overtime during the week and every other sat. ( which we don't get paid). Then I showed him the number. I said if you really think you can get someone to program for less than $15.00 per hour, you better jump on it, cause thats's what it comes out to. He never brought it up again. I say this because I have worked as an Independant contractor doing, Manufacturing/ Application Engineering and CNC Programming. The going rate in the Cincinnati-Dayton area is $30.00 to $50.00 per hour-Plus expenses. Just thought it was relevant to your question....

Yea Tim, Its' not hard to learn and very user-friendly. Just no bells or whitles like MasterCam..... As for the Machines- I believe the Okumas are better than any lathe out there..My humble opinion.

While you are all ears....When is lathe going to get some TLC? It seems LOOOOOOG Overdue!

"Tapers had nothing to do with it." I agree, Deflection from a dull cutter or too much feed will not decrease if you "conventional" mill instead of "climb" Mill. Tell him he got out voted and to change to a sharp cutter- preferable Carbide and you won't have to worry about taper anymore. Remember: Ideas are free- really good ones are rare. So, ideas, like opinions are subjective.

+100,000,000 Ron, Also Mclaren, It is a "safe" way to take all axis home before ending the program...no matter where the machine table stops! I do understand the question though. I have ran into programs written back in the day where programmers tried to use different "table Load" positions etc. It can be very confusing if you don't keep a "Standard" format for Home and End of program.

Can you say "FATFINGER" Been there, done that!

Congrats CNC!

How bout " Sir Posts a Lot".

My thought is ADMAC is good, but no where near as suffisticated as MasterCam. ( no bells and whistles) But it will let you program at the machine control or off-line if you have a copy of the software and a key (dongle). Great Lathes, can't say enough.

"you will love it, get IGF with it even if you dont plan to use it much because you get all the usertask options that way" I agree, it is windows based so very easy to work with. I wish all controls had this!

What about MasterCam "Xpert" ? Just a thought....

Welcome Machineryman! Be careful, a few of these guys are a little touchy when you ask the wrong questions. But most everyone is great to work with and will give you lots of advice or point you in the right direction, anyway. Just be respectful and they won't bite! I just hope your retailer is not like mine...it takes them forever to answer anyhing to do with posts and when they do respond its usually " We would be happy to fix that up for you at $$$xx.000 per post". Yeah, thanks for the help! These guys are way smarter and a lot faster to help ya! (climbing off of soapbox-head bowed)

Anyone else out there got any other ideas on how to fix this? Thanks in advance...

Roger, I did what you advised but no change to code lines. It did however take out some other spacing such as between text blocks..... Any other ideas?

Thanks Roger, I'll "give er a try". BTW, since my post has so many instances of -> Spaces$ or -> sav_spc Maybe my post is chopped up and has redundant lines.......which are not REALLY needed? What do you think?