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?

Thanks for the reply Roger, I do have several spots in my post like: spaces$ :2 and I have !spaces$ And I have sav_spc=spaces$ Also spaces$= prv_spaces$ And spaces$_spaces$>0, "",e$ But none of them is set to 0 or ZERO I was able to get some of the spaces I need by changing a couple of spaces$=0 to spaces$=2 but that is as far as I can get. Any other ideas?

I have read and researched everything I can find and still need help. What is this: ( sav_spc ) ? I am having trouble getting the spacing on my post the way I want it. I changed it in the Control Def. and it has no effect. I can get spacing to change elsewhere in the program ,except between the actual G and M codes: EXAMPLE ( TOOL - 1 OFFSET - 1 ) ( TRL1 - OD ROUGH - CNMG543- INSERT CNMG-543 ) N0110G00T0100 G00X20.Z20. G92S1300M42 G90T0101M32 G96S750M03 G00X2.9500Z1.5167M8 G01X.7562F.015 G00Z1.6167 G00X2.9500 G00Z1.4733 G01X.7562 G00Z1.5733 G00X2.9500 G00Z1.4300 G01X.7562 G00Z1.5300 G00X2.9500 G00Z1.3300 G01X.7562 G00Z1.4300 N0120 G00X2.7099 G00Z1.5200 G01Z1.4200 G01Z.9131 G01X2.8514Z.9838 M9 T0100M32 G00X20.Z20. M01 END Is this caused by (sav_spc) or something else? How do I get it to space as: (G00 X2.9500 Z1.5167 M8) Thanks,

Roger and Others, It did work just fine Roger, Thanks again. I did have to add this to every post I have and then debug each, but it was worth it. Now I only have one file to keep track of, update, send to Machine control etc... You guys are GREAT. Thanks for TEACHING me to FISH..... Art Bailey "Tarheel" Dayton, Ohio

Tks Matt, That is good news..

Yes Roger, I will try and develop this into my post. I'll let you know how it works. Thanks for your help

Thanks Roger, Yes, I want to run them at the same time and also add the .set Setup file into the Post so when I process it and post it out the setup sheet will be in the .nc file output. The reason is so I only have one file to DNC to the machine-the .NC file. The operator will print out a hard copy of the file (setup sheet included with CNC program) but the setup sheet will be ignored by the machine control. We already do this currently with SmartCam....Old version.... but we are changing everything over to MasterCam X2.

Can anyone tell me how to add a file to the X2 Post? I would like to attach the .set setup sheet file to the post so I can output it as text along with the Code for the machines. I can do this by text editing but I would like to do this in the post file if I can. Any help? Thanks in advance...I have learned a lot about Mcam and posts just from this Forum... Great work!

Tks Steve, I just don't get a nice warm fuzzy with having my $30,000 plust investment in MCam down for a $30 USB Hasp. But I do appreciate your response. GBY Art

Anyone else out there ever have thier USB NetHasp go Bad? I'm just courious if anyone else has ever had this happen or if it's just a "Rare Occurance" as Mcam told us.