Go into the pldrst part fo the drill cyccle. There you will see a cout. Take that and put it on a line by itself before the X,Y,Z and you should be good to go. HTH

Do a search on those 2 toolpaths a lot has been covered over the years on them. Welcome to the forum.

Well the through hole makes all the difference in the world. You know have something a little more manageable. I would still think about grabbing it in the sub and finish the face and deburr it all right there on the machine though.

Me either the more information the better in my book.

quote: Somewhere in Florida, a village is missing it's Idiot Sssshhhhhhhhhh they still are not sure where I went to...............

Look at Ref points or make sure the retract is higher than the start point if it is set to absolute and say you use the default of .25 and your start point is really 2.5 then Mastercam ignores that know you made a mistake just start making the program.

Yes that should be fine for what you are attempting to do here. Any problems post up and someone will be glad to assist and help you out.

Would not even attempt such foolishness. I see major problems with brittleness, stress fractures on the face and other things that will cause this part to fail any penetrate or NDT check. I would tell Einstein (The person who thought this was a good way to take EM=C^2 and go back to the drawing board.) There is a reason people do them as parts in the annealed or semi hard state and not the hard state then harden and finish and there are things going on with cross section grain flow and other requirements that have to be consider that someone need to go back look at the ANSI, DPS or other manufacturing requirements and make sure they are following them before they even think about shipping these part to a customer even if you do get this to work. I normally use about 32 to 35 sfm on this hard of material with Carbide, because I think Ceramic without holding it with a sub spindle will break. Now you start getting down to .05 in diameter how fast do you need that spindle speed to be to maintain the sfm required. I would try to part it off leaving stock then finish. If you got a sub spindle then you can do it in one operation just transfer the finish operation to a sub spindle to eliminate handling. With a single spindle one set-up requirement again Einstein told you had to be I would send the job back and tell them you bid it wrong and sorry for the trouble.

Yeah switch to Catia and use the Moldplus FTA/MDB tool to bring the MDB directly into Mastercam and done. Pro-E is using Step and it a different protocol than others use. They do not make it easier for people to pull information from their software nit o3rd party software. HTH

Look on the steep and shallows area that is where you set your depths like the older style toolpaths. HTH

If you right click on a group of operations and select the change work offsets option then you can change 1 to 1000 operation very quickly and most time without having to regenerate the operations. HTH

try doing a repair install and see if that fixes. It sounds like a registry issue or something dot unregistered from the computer. A repair should fix the issue. HTH

I have seen some really wild machines, but what you are talking about would be 1000% custom no doubt about it. HTH

Do a Inverse WCS and try that. Take a Top Plane and rotate it 180. It will crate a New Plane. Use that for the WCs and see if that tricks out the machine sim.

quote: We are also running a nethasp for all our seats. There is the key. quote: When I try to add dimensions or notes to these .mc9 files, they blink and are mostly invisible until I click the mouse to "drop" them in place on the display. Our IT department thinks this has something to do with the wow emulator, running a 32 bit application in a 64 bit environment. Yes I would agree with this assessment. One of those you want to use something that came out about 10 years ago you kind of have to deal with it. Funny they spend all the money on new computers to use such old software on them I guess to each their own.

Rob it was cool to meet you as well.

Well when you do this it stores the information to a variable on the machine. You should be able to access that variable. From that you would want to write a logic that would take the H7 value and then store it in the h33 value. Should be pretty straight forward a process to do. You could get fancy and have the post make the macro for you, but really up to you how much work you want to put into it. HTH

Go in Advanced setting and turn off auot select faces and see if tht fixes the problem. HTH

The haul arse kind. I would get a 45 deg 3 flute polished flute. Should be able to run it like a regular tool maybe kick it down 5% to start then ramp up your step over from 25%. Probably 42k and 1250 imp would be where I would start if I had the machine to push it. HTH

Colin your method if use used window from top view would still get the upper and lower chains. By using the depth option you can window the whole thing with C-plane and done. HTH

Why not go to front view. Grab all the bottom chains with window. Then right click on the level button and move to level 1000. Then turn off all the other levels. Now click on the toolpath. Click window and done. If you want to pick the chains again they are where you can select the chains on a level by them self. Quick easy and done. 2nd option on the all or only selection there is a miscellaneous method. There is a Depth option and you can decide on the depth of what you want to be selected. See the picture. Now if Zero is the top of the part and your chains are all on the -.5 then use =.5 or the >.5 for everything lower than .5. You can play with these to get use to their capabilities to speed up something that is really a Mastercam thing and not a Solidworks thing.

Do a search for my CrazyMillman probing stuff I cover a lot of the things you need ni those threads.

You have the right attitude and keep plugging away at it. Get as much seat time as you can. Tell your current employer you would like to come in early or stay late to program parts for them. Yes it sucks nothing getting paid to do work for them, but you might be surprised what the current programmer(s) might do to start helping you here and there. You are correct about the catch 22, but I will tell you this my first 5 axis job a trail by fire job. No experience programming Mastercam 5 axis only about 3 months seat time using Mastercam and away I went. The first day I did more than they had in 3 months. The rest is history and here I am today. When I was learning Mastercam I took files home and bought myself a $4000 computer 9 years ago to have a computer to push the software. Wife thought I lost my marbles, but it paid off because I learned a lot by doing and trying everything. That was before I found the forum. I learn more sometimes helping others to question I think I might know the answer too, but am not really sure. Good luck in your search and if I were looking I would tell you to come talk to me. There are people looking and email Brain that has been putting up adds for people he is a guy that might be able to help you out in your search.

When you activate certain functions of the toolpath that allow the tool to travel off and on the part then these would be the plunge and retract of the surface toolpath. So if you had a hard material where coming off and coming on would be rough on your tool but the cut is not so rough then you might want to change the plunge and retract to the toolpath. Another problem you could run into is the sharp change of the tool path. So what I have done is create a .05 loop with smooth amount with loop for my toolpath. I then can control my toolpaths transition, but still get 600 ipm on the surface toolpath but slow it down to 100 ipm on the move to move by using the plunge and retract rate with these settings. If you click the question mark when doing surfacing toolpath under gap setting it will help you get familiar with what all of these gap setting will do and what the advanced settings will do. They all have a certain purpose and if used correctly aid in creating great programs verse just okay programs. HTH

Chris Thanks. I have a job to do and I give 110%, always have always will. Biggest reason why I have always been called crazy is my work ethic. Why you working so hard? Why do you do all those different jobs? Why do you take work home and learn? Why do you help out so much on a forum where you get no pay for helping others? Why do care so much? Why do you have so much passion for what you do? All crazy talk I tell you, but what do you do? You either be yourself or what others want you to be and I am not perfect by any means, but I always try to stay true to myself and the Lord no matter if others think it is crazy or not.