Those bloody Brits have a lot to answer for!

Brass is good for non stick as it's a dissimilar material. But not for wear characteristics. Bronze is a better bet..... Ref rapids - I'd be careful with too high - you don't want any galling on slideways or screws. Settle for what the machine is.....(no offence it's a cool project)

I am intrigued.....why mask nickel? It's conductive, you can solder to it, so it's great for conductivity and bonding etc? Threads are luckily the only thing I had to encounter, although I had seen at the platers parts (we never made) that were masked for some reason?

Is a new machine an option?

The high temperature green tape that the powder coaters use, works well for big surfaces. If you need fancy masking shapes, obviously this can be "die cut" to give you the fancy shapes. I've also used rubberised "paint" before where you paint on the rubber and peel after plating. Ultimately, the cost of plating rockets. But you do get a one hit part, rather than having to set it back up on a machine with risk of damage, scrap etc. i.e. although you pay the plater more, you only handle the part once.... Nickel is ALL about preparation. The only success I have had is with prior bead blasting to uniformly "rough" the surface. But you have to be so careful with this, as your media has to be clean, and you have to have clean parts before blasting. Otherwise you're blasting oil into the surface....

As i put on PM.....this is a high tension plating so think of it as tightly wrapped around the material. So it depends upon the adhesion of the plating....as I've seen a cut in a part overnight, peel and roll back and curl like a lid to a can of spam!

I've always found the best way to manipulate the models, is as you say. Remove fillets and then go from there. The exact opposite of model creation, which is create fillets last.

In your case Ron, Mad-der

All the very best Aaron. You'll be leaving a huge hole at the tower, with big boots to fill. As for having your own shop - prepare for long hours and to gradually go mad

What this does show, is the great fact that there is always 3,4, or more ways of achieving the same end goal.

Everydays a schoolday! I always thought end of cycle (before calling another cycle) needed a G80 so the G99 line would have needed the G80 between the following G99 line. And then the G80 had to be on a separate line....like the below! % O5001 G00 Z0.1 G99 G81 Z-0.64 R.1 F20. G80 G99 G83 Z-1.1 R-0.6 Q.1 Z0.1 G80 M99 %

So could you have a master excel spread sheet as thee tool library? Then import that into the mastercam tool manager? And then as you amend your excel master library, you upload/append into your mastercam tool library? That would be sweet, because with the excel master, you can also add part number and issue columns so you can list the part numbers that your tools are used on etc etc....

If...IF your solid geo is correct (modelled nominal etc), it always makes sense to import that. Why spend time re-drawing things that are already created? And if the solid isn't on nominal, the push pull commands in the model prep really are first class, for "tweaking" faces.

Unite the Luddites - to Hell with the 4th Industrial Revolution

....and a bit more trolling ....purely because you state "Industry 4.0" (which for those that don't know, is the WEF's 4th Industrial revolution) Below is your post on Practical Machinist, stating you already have the algorithm to allow for optimal tolerance blah blah (attached). So how does this work - how does your algorithm "tell the CAM" to allow for the following different machines? Can you please explain? I want to make the same part on 3x different machines. #1 machine is a large Haas VF8 machine - a big heavy table with slow acceleration and deceleration. #2 machine is a much smaller Haas - smaller lighter table with the next generation faster processing control and much better acc/dec. #3 machine is a gantry design machine - the table is fixed and the axes are a bridge/portal design. So although mass of component on the table is irrelevant, unfortunately I have an issue with the X axis where there is "some" out of squareness to the Y. This has an early Fanuc control with no lookahead processing. ???