So I read this....and the 'ol grey cells were reminding me of something... My old 810 controls didn't have a HDD - they had a memory/chip PCB. This was denoted PC20. There was an option when I bought them to have a HDD instead (as per the 840 controls) and this would have made it a PC50 "version" (I believe). I had read some thread where people had converted their Siemens to SSD drives and read this regarding HDD:- Had a similar problem with an 840D of mine. It was the mdbbe.ini that didnt load at "area load". I was able to copy over the mdbbe.ini from my factory floppies to the hard drive and that fixed the problem. To do this, I connected the siemens drive to a mac OSX machine with an IDE to USB adapter. (Ive heard you dont want to connect older Siemens drives to windows machines). Fixed the problem. If its the drive starting to fail, you can fix some bad sector problems with ddrescue a free linux program. That also worked for me and fixed some bad files on the original 840D drive. Lastly, looking at the Siemens site - this shows:- https://support.industry.siemens.com/tf//WW/en/posts/hard-disk-copy-use-in-pcu-50-3/190130?page=0&pageSize=10 https://support.industry.siemens.com/tf/ww/en/posts/clone-the-ssd-harddisk-intel-ssdc2bb080g4-of-the-pcu50-3/220128/?page=0&pageSize=10 So it looks like it can be done - and surely in doing this, 99% of problems would go away?

Bob How big is your coolant tank? IME it's the coolant that is predominantly the problem maker.

Oh okay - yes Planes Planes Planes was always the cry for rotations and I always religiously did that - the one TOP WCS for A0 and new C+T for the angles but using the A0 TOP WCS. I realize AMC knows how to use the SW from all his other postings. I guess what I was really querying is was that the correct or an acceptable way to do it - does detting a new WCS for each angle work okay? By memory with my post, it would give funky A outputs if I did 'gram with more than one WCS.

Not to argue or derail, but you said you create a new WCS for each rotation (angle).

Is this correct??? I was always told that set your part A0 and your TOP WCS, and then for all rotations create new planes for each angle. But all planes then use the A0 WCS?

There you go Colin - have one of mine

My experience is that most don't care. I had one customer who fully understood and modelled everything on nominal though except threads (nominal drill size only). Back in the day I had one customer model a manifold all on nominal and then updated the print throwing in a couple of -0/+ tolerances on there. We had to scrap the stock and WIP for that one...

Okay makes sense. My place we had 4x #40 identical machines, and 3x #30 identical machines. So we were all about standardisation, so any job could go on any machine. Bottlenecks would have broken me, if only that job could go on this machine and this job go on that machine....

A few years ago my 'ol chap (Carpenter) walked into the shop and asked why I looked stressed and "what exactly are you doing"? So I started to quickly walk him through the process of grammin a part and he was tutting and sighing and getting more impatient - I was about 2 minutes into it. He interrupted and said "well surely in this day and age, all you have to do is photograph the drawing and the machine should be able to do it for you huh"? My reply was "Dad, go put the kettle on" Colin - nice explanation, and kudos to the Summers. It truly shows how cutting edge (no pun intended) they were back then.

Ron, Is this not the best thing to do? Have known tool assys with proven speeds and feeds, for each material?

Nicely explained answer (as always) Aaron. Not trying to bust you here....but why aren't the settings then saved?

Oh I get you Bob = 100%. But seriously, I just cannot believe that the coolant is done this way and not saved with the tool during setup. I guess everything is done for a reason...I'm struggling to think of a good one though for not saving the settings...

Having for 12 years ran 2x Mastercam workstations networked to 3x printers and 4x other PC's with no outside interwebz connection, I can assure you it is the only way to go. Have a separate cheap PC for emails and goooogle...

OFI !!! Opportunity For Improvement! Submit an enhancement request...

Yup. If spindles don't turn, we don't earn!

This was kept separate together with sub #2, and sub#3 etc, as they would get copied and paste onto the PCMCIA card. The main prog is obvioulsy separate, becuase that goes into the control. The subs are separate becuase they're on the PCMCIA card. You may have to change a parameter too to make this work. If you do, James (CNCAPPSJAMES) is the one to thank for all of this info

M198P0001 is the format you need. Example:- N0201T2M6 M1 ( 12MM DIA GARR KNUCKLE FINE 50 OUT SHUNK ) ( ROUGH OD ) G10G90L12P2R6. G05.1Q1 G54G0G17G40G49G69G80G90X-7.294Y-68.898S10000M3 T3M8 G43Z10.H2 M198P0001 N0301T3M6 M1 ( 10MM DIA R0.5 BULL NOSE - 25MM FLUTE - 35MM OUT ) ( FINISH Z0 ) G10G90L12P3R5. G05.1Q1 G54G0G17G40G49G69G80G90X9.75Y49.S10000M3 T4M8 G43Z10.H3 Z1. M198P0002 And sub prog #1 example:- % O0001( SUB FOR VMC-0864 ) ( 12MM DIA GARR KNUCKLE FINE 50 OUT SHUNK ) ( ROUGH OD ) Z1. G1 Z-13.738 F1500. X-7.043 Y-68.8 Z-14.421 X-6.525 Y-68.596 Z-14.723 G3 X-5.959 Y-67.301 Z-15. I-.365 J.931 F7500. G1 X-7.915 Y-62.308 CODE CODE CODE CODE CODE Z-18.446 Y-57.158 Z-22.615 X41.3 Y-55.572 Z-19.597 G0 Z-18.597 Z10. M9 G28 Z10. M19 G05.1 Q0 G49 M99 %

I would re-cut your prog, and have all your tool calls etc in the main program (in the machine memory) and call your subs via M198, and keep all your subs on the card.

My dumazz business partner.... once deleted all customers from the network, and after I left deleted all technical info that was there (machine parameters, mastercam backups/posts etc - I was told this directory is still missing LoL). Also other files at other times were moved into other directories - which was a PITA hunt and find...although nothing was ever lost as I had everything backed up. He had a habit of waking his screen from sleep by waving the mouse and left clicking (select) and hitting enter and escape and still waving the mouse before letting everything go when the screen woke. If explorer was open (generally yes), directory/files had been selected, and launched into other sub folders or wiped. And emails sent to wrong people, or CC'd in when they shouldn't have been, sub progs not saved with main prog from the machine...etc etc etc...

I know I shouldn't, but Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Buuuutttttt formatting was lost. .doc was an enhancement request back in X9 days...

Can it save in MSWord .doc format yet?

Oh yes, fully understand the Iguess untrimmed surface chit, but I hadn't touched that format for 20 years! Parasolid and Step were my friends of choice, but the potential inaccuracy has gobsmacked me!

THAT surprises me. I never realised conversions were less than 99.9999% accurate! Everyday is a school day!

You boys Coolest gig in the world and you don't 'gram wearing sunglasses?