15 hours ago, jpatry said:

In what universe?

I work in a shop full of Haas, and it's like driving the plastic barbie jeep in the Baja 1000.

Yehbut in my world, at least you'd look good....

11 minutes ago, cruzila said:

"It's just a guideline"

"Oh, Yeh, but print is king anyway"....

4 minutes ago, CEMENTHEAD said:

Import a Cap Screw matching your thread size from McMaster-Carr, Place it, Boolean remove it. Easiest way IMHO. 

Don't forget to scale the screw to get the pitch diameter correct, and then add the appropriate root radius to the thread

3 thou and 7 thou DOC's?

So that's where the name "ever lasting carbide" comes from?

9 hours ago, metalmansteve said:

What ever happened to the OP?  I was hoping to hear about his immigration story.

3 hours ago, JParis said:

This needs a bump for the pure history of it, the long gone names, what this forum used to be.

Thanks Terry for digging this one out...

Alex passed back in 2020 but he is still talked about fondly in some circles

Alex's post now seems more relevant than ever with the glutenous b4stards around the big table squeezing us all ever tighter and tighter.
And yes, this place was awesome, and we're all just passing through....

12 hours ago, Jake L said:

 

What's the $ for X+?

I think I free demoed it once upon a time 

 

Unsure now but if it's a few hunnerd it pays for itself easy

https://www.gmccs.de/xplus.php

/swerve

X+....1x click and it can tell you G54/55 etc, RPM, T=D, Coolant, etc....

8 hours ago, jpatry said:

Haven't we all been handed drawings with blind threads spec'd deeper than the predrill?

....and a thread that's a through hole, but with the annotation stating the material thickness and a plus/minus on it!

Just now, gcode said:

The last thing I do before going home for the day is reboot my machine.

Fissy.

Saves the cat

19 hours ago, jpatry said:

I've never understood the reason for this

Also....surfaces give the easy ability to manipulate (the drive) by extending/trimming etc....

On 8/2/2021 at 6:16 PM, Bob W. said:

I prefer a bull whip and cattle prod.

Today is day one!

Back to this then Bobbo!

2 minutes ago, gcode said:

it's 5 oclock somewhere  

Outta likes - I'll have to approve your post tomorrow!!!!

1 minute ago, gcode said:

fissed for the sake of truth and accuracy 

To be specific o, we must mention Pacifico....

Anyway - where's the OP?

Is it too early to start drunk posting

5 minutes ago, JParis said:

How would you lock "live" backplot lines....from that standpoint, you'd have to lock every operation, which you can already do...

As i said John - talking levels primarily but also as Matt said. Anything to stop the fat finger fudge!

6 hours ago, Jobnt said:

I've got over 35,000 hours of seat time with it between Mastercam and Gibbscam. 

 

I just blew the cobwebs off the 'ol memory bank and bashing the abacus I reckon a max for me is between 10,000 to 15000.

But I am TheeNewbeeee and prolly spent most my time in OT

15 minutes ago, JParis said:

Maybe...

I am into another 500+ operation file, I can only imagine the havoc that could be wrecked in a file as such, with all the rotations,  ops and tranforms and stock models...

It would be great to be able to lock levels etc to stop any accidental movement etc....vis a vie Autodesk and yr 2010 enhancement requests....

6 hours ago, Azoth said:

....then I have no reason not to be confident in my command of the software so... I mean, if you want I can probably train you in mastercam if it really took you 6 years.

LMAO again!

Certainly "grade A" for Attitude

3 hours ago, neurosis said:

Maybe not in those exact words?     I do remember a lot of excuse making for software shortcomings back in the day.  This is one area I'm surprised that in this amount of time, hasn't been addressed. Cimatron was able to do this back in the 90's  without having to draw a bunch of extra geometry or rely on roughing operations.  It's a simple 2d contour and you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get it to not cut a bunch of air.  

How much air cutting to you see TopSolid doing when using 2d contour? 

/putting on the flame suit and waiting for the ole adage "a programmer never blames his tools".    

LoL

We know bugfixes and enhancement requests have always taken a back seat to the sales department's new shiny best sellers etc which has always caused many frustrations. But life is a compromise....

OP says "They happen to run conventionally slow, shallow, and heavy cuts so I don't want to use mastercam's dynamic toolpaths for this. " without knowing what the dynamic paths can actually do.... many more hours of reading the books, watching youtube videos and reading this forum (search "whatever") and asking many more questions will be of massive benefit.

As we know, to be competent will take a lot longer than a few months, but the wonderful thing about mastercam is there's many ways to do the job, and you can get exactly the output that you want.

Whether that's the "best way" or not though....

3 hours ago, Azoth said:

The dynamic toolpath seems geared for High Speed machining which I've never witnessed in action in all my 3 years of experience (may need to look into it). Right now I'm just trying to replicate a few old programs I've ran (fixturing and all) since cloning a known process seems like a good way to gauge my command over a cam system. They happen to run conventionally slow, shallow, and heavy cuts so I don't want to use mastercam's dynamic toolpaths for this. The program I'm replicating wasn't made in mastercam, but mcam holds the majority share of job postings so I've just been trying it out. I still think I'd rather use one that will give me what I want without having to trick the software.

I'll probably just bang these parts out so I'm atleast familiar with the process before demoing a few others. I've found I'm not the only one making these same complaints going back 10 years unaddressed and the 2 solutions that keep coming up is "manually draw your toolpath" and "it's good enough for me so quit whining".

If I end up sticking with mastercam I'll just have to get in the habit of drawing auxiliary geometry as I model the part if I want specific toolpaths. Created a curve from the solid, duplicated and offset twice, then mirrored about the axis and chained in order. Only saved 2 minutes, but the aircutting is hard for me to look at. It's just annoying because not only do I have to waste time manually placing toolpaths, I also can't adjust my stepover as a variable and must instead manually shift the new guidelines.

Is this what programming with cam is supposed to be? I guess I should go easier on my programmer for some of the wack toolpaths he gives me. I had no idea these exorbitantly priced programs would be so particular.

 

#1 LMAO.

#2 In all my years here, I can't recall anyone of prominence saying "it's good enough for me so quit whining". The older guard here, are both VERY critical, but also VERY defensive - ultimately they all collectively want a better product and are VERY proactive

#3 LMAO again

4 hours ago, crazy^millman said:

Too bad some partners aren't listed on there. 10 years I have been hearing we will be listed yet no where to be found.

Irrespective Ron....Those of us that know, know.

1 hour ago, crazy^millman said:

i think like anything where technology has improved our abilities to do things it has opened many doors for people that otherwise may have not been opened. Issue I have is the companies being irresponsible with it and only caring about making a buck making wild claims and certifying people who have no clue about other aspects that go into things related to what they are designing.

So Simple a 6 year old can program parts sound familiar?

2 weeks of training in Fusion and you will be a full 5 axis programmer?

You can run a full enterprise organization for only $600 yearly fusion subscription dong CAD/CAM/CAE/CAV? 1000 different disclaimers to be found on 20 different places. Just don't do ITAR, DOD or DOE work with it and you are not going to jail is all.

My peeve....was in the DO days, you'd produce prints and someone else would check your work. There was job stability and through cross-project working, we all knew all about all the company products....

Now the beancounters have got involved....in companies that should know better (looking at Aerospace OEMs), a contractor appears and produces xxxxe with little idea and not working to customer standards....

So you (we did many times from different customers) get a part to make, with ATF material spec, or unusual treatments that the company has never before used, thread depths to the same depth of the drilled hole, let alone general tolerances that have everything tied right down for no reason whatsoever.

Make, produce the FAIR, the part is then approved, and is then expensive forever more because no-one has the balls to change anything. A part that should be cheap is 50+% expensive than it should be...EVERY time it's made.

World Class huh!

On 9/15/2023 at 2:28 PM, SuperHoneyBadger said:

I'm impressed at how bad some designers are. It must take some sack to submit something like that as your work, and I can't even imagine how they make those models in the first place. Just pick a random point in space and start clicking?

In the halcyon days, there was training in the drawing office and a "draftsman" was a respected trade....Nowadays everyone can switch on a computer and be a "designer"

On 9/12/2023 at 10:35 PM, gcode said:

I used to work with a guy who had his default chaining tolerance set to .008"

I typically run at .0002"

I always had to remember to bump my chaining tolerance to .008 when I opened one of his files,

Otherwise, they'd blow up like Joe Biden's brain trying to speak a coherent sentence.

Surely....those files couldn't have been THAT bad....

19 minutes ago, JParis said:

How would a software that only stores your files, suddenly upgrade a file?

 

Based on that theory, you should never update your Windows program...

Unless I misunderstood which is most possible, post 6 from Ricky Hey John, when i close and reopen the file, the tracker removes the .stp files

Ref never upgrading windows....yes you are 100% correct! By design

My place had XP when the doors were opened in 2005, and around 2009 upgraded PC's and then 7 was installed on everything and stayed till I sold in 2017.  6x PC's all networked and not connected to the interwebs. Zero issues in 12 years. No "overnight updated graphics driver" issues, no nothing. Absolutely flawless. Look at all the time I saved and the many less headaches I had!

And just the 1x standalone pc for internet and emails.