3 hours ago, Thee Rickster ™ said:

 

Generally customer sends a new file, it goes through our CN tracker and a CN flags the

production job, we Move the current rev data to an obsolete folder and place the new rev data

in the main folder.

 

 

This is exactly how I had my shop and the place I worked at previous.

Customer folder, Part number and Issue folder, and within this an OOI folder (Out of Issue).

Everything to make the part (master job card, drawing/print, cad file, mcam file, NCprogram, setup sheets, emails if important etc) within.

When the part was raised in issue, rename the folder to correct (new) issue, move all contents into the OOI file. Then put into the newly named folder new print and cad model. 

Then when priority/time came, sort the changes and create a new master job card, copy/then update to create a new mcam file, prog etc.... 

Worked like a charm.

Call me a luddite, but it would frighten me to death mcam potentially hosing files automagically....imagine upgrading a release and it "upgraded" every one of your cam files.... 

6 hours ago, Jobnt said:

The thing is, these T, H and D values match when I start the program. Somewhere down the road they lose their xxxx and I have no idea why or what's causing it.

Honestly, X+ every day and twice on Sundays!

1x click to check THD, G54/55etc status, Coolant, etc - it's a fantastic double check. Because it's the hot job when someone is on your back that always bite, and we all know whose fault the bang will be....

4 hours ago, #Rekd™ said:

This is what I experienced.......randomly changing although my control definition was set correctly. This was happening back in X7 and I have experienced it in MC2019, MC2020. 

 

 

Yayyyyy....I haven't yet lost my mind.....

59 minutes ago, JParis said:

In my opinion, it's not a fix....the fix is to get your control def squared away

I appreciate what Colin is offering but at the end of the day it simply covers for the programmers bad habits and is a crutch. I prefer to teach my 'grammers to work in a properly thought out and constructed work process flow.

JM2C YMMV

 

 

Butttt....back in the day (X6/7ish?) wasn't there a bug where the occasional THD error was thrown even when the Mach/Control Defs were correct?

Which is when Colin suggested this?

Late to the party....but I would always look to ramp things like this 90degrees to what OP is doing. You can usually run a bigger stepover as the cusp height is negliable.

And very neat post work for the internal macro.

1 hour ago, crazy^millman said:

You mean follow the Autodesk process of product development by buying other companies and porting their stuff into yours and I don't know call it some name that means fusing stuff together and calling it all original?

Yip!

But to be fair to Gibbs....from what I saw ref the Hori package, it rocked!

I know James M said a while ago that 5ax machines are now where it's at, and they outsell horis nowadays, but for all my parts (prismatics/electrical enclosures etc) - I'd have cut an arm off for a pair of 5x pallet horis....

13 hours ago, JoshC said:

i really hope some day mastercam releases a more powerful transform, we don't need stupid changes like changing the name of Inch to US, or we don't need stupid stock setup changes that make the software harder to use and then we all get ignored when we share our opinions on that, we need and want stuff that makes mastercam easier to work with like improvements to transform to make it more powerful, or a transform made specifically for Horizontal machines so we can have more control over a pallet and offsets and order of operations things are ran in. There is just so many users out there that would benefit from a more powerful transform toolpath in mastercam. 

....or port across the Gibbs horizontal module, now both companies are under the one umbrella....

6 hours ago, Jobnt said:

That's a bit of a stretch don't you think?  

I'm a v9 fanboi. I have less than a year of X seat time. 

The plus = you only had to learn 1x new interface.

The minus = you had to learn Gibbs inbetween

If it's good enough for the 6 million dollar man, it's more than good enough for me

Congratulations - nice work!

59 minutes ago, Jobnt said:

Ahhh, that makes sense.

I guess there was a lot of people posting pr0n, illegal file sharing and making racial slurrs and they couldn't control the crowd. 

Still kind of speaks to my point I suppose. 

Seemed like the place to hang - Dang - I musta missed all that

1 hour ago, crazy^millman said:

I think it had more to do with changes in laws and other things out of their control that meant they had to make a tough decision. 

Personally....I think it was to just break the gang up. To make people disappear. To make more go to the official site.

To make dealers not embarrassed as they apparently were too embarrassed to recommend people to come here... #F'kinBedWetters  

3 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

Worthless AI bots are infiltrating. Great.

Break out that ban hammer!

I mean...what's the bots goal here? Is he paid for by #Plastics-R-Us?

What's "their" (whoever "they" are) goal - just to get people discussing necro threads or discussing plastics in general? Or just fill the interwebs with meaningless sh!te?

:shrug: 

But seriously....one of the main reasons (deciding factors) for my 3x seat Mastercam purchase when I was Eng Manager of a place back in 2000, was post customisability and reseller support. And roll forwards to when I had my own place in 2005 and bought 2x more seats, that underlined the initial decision.

Ultimately 1x mill post which handled Robodrill/VMC/3ax/4ax simultaneous combinations, by having a couple of posting prompts, was superb. Flexible customisation, is the name of the game IMHO, and to lose even 10%, would be a bad move....

2 hours ago, gcode said:

I think they will see a catastrophic drop in maintenance renewals if they implement this.

I am currently responsible for 32 different milling posts and 21 lathe posts that reside on a network

About 20% of them are Postability posts, but even so, the time and effort required to update posts 

from one release to the next is one of the things I most dislike about  Mastercam.

The idea that at some point I will have to pay someone to update all these posts so I can use MC2027 or whatever

and that this cost will reoccur annually, does not bear thinking about. 

Add the stress involved trying to run a 120man machine shop with 50 new and unproven posts and even the most

ardent Mastercam fanbio is going to blink.

An additional issue is, there are 250K seats of Mastercam in use and God knows how many posts.

There are not enough post developers on the planet to handle the migration process.

 

Is Fusion an option?

:BooM:

IF....this is going to happen (MPNet)....hopefully for everyone's sake, it's well thought out and well implemented.

Last thing users will want is any removal of features and restrictions on DIY editing, and a half-arsed implementation.

15 hours ago, Jobnt said:

Hi Thee Petee! How's everything? 

/wink wink, nudge nudge/ 

 

He's just proved, there's no such thing as a 5 minute job....

7 hours ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

You just decided to go lefty out of utility? You're a wildman, and I respect the hell out of you for that.

He'd then count back to 10, then change hands back again....

5 hours ago, Jobnt said:

No, I'm using a Microsoft 2 button mouse. Small and ergo for me. Don't have a solid enough work flow to use a mouse with more than a couple of buttons. Might end up with one. Especially as I spend more and more time in solidworks. 

My left hand runs the mouse and my right is on the keyboard or space pilot.

Maybe worth trying a logitech mx master. FWIW, It's the best I've used....

Or buy T6511 - that's artificially aged, then controlled stretched and straightened.

You shouldn't need any initial heat treat then (as it has zero stress), and depending upon your component shape and cutters/process, you shouldn't really need any other stress relieve. 

Aluminum can be a funny thing regarding heat and "stress relieving"....FYI hard anodise is a cold process - near freezing. 

13 hours ago, rgrin said:

The .0002 flatness has to be in spec after plating. Just getting inconsistent results with plating. Some will come back fine, but the worse one was upto .0006 out of flat post plating.

 

If the component is uniform in shape, this is the component stress reliving....it has moved during the time it's been inspected>shipped>plated(temperature)>returned to Inspection for checking....

Plating will be rougher - for hard, you always need to machine at least twice as good surface finish pre plate, to what is required post plate.

Depending upon batch qty, general carbide cuts hard anodise okay in my experience.

With this flatness tolerance, how large is the area?

And you better not distort the part when clamping....

Do you have the Mitsubishi or the Fanuc 0MA control?

If fanuc, this may help explain

https://www.memexoee.com/wp-content/uploads/M100702E-MAI-Memory-Upgrade-for-Fanuc-0.pdf 

Current plan is to continue separate. 

2 hours ago, sharles said:

I know I'm not even close to G-code's level of expertise....

He's a giant of the industry fo sho!

When he finally hangs up his rat mat, if asked "what did you use to do", he'll be able to say "I was one of the top 1% grammers in the world" 

As you're already a Houghton user, could be worth using what I had in all the machines (lathes mills and manuals)
Houghton HOCUT 795 SC (chlorine free – approved for titanium machining).
All @ 10% and we'd rigid tap M1.6 threads in aluminum when required with no issues.

Standardization is a wonderful thing.

If only people would do it....

5 hours ago, volitan71 said:

 

FYI, just used code expert in 2024 for the first time and it loads way faster. They must have fixed something. Big difference.

@Jobnt it could be worth grabbing the 2024 exe and dropping it into your folder.

And see if it runs....