Yes you can do exactly what you want and you don't even need an optipath license. Go to your tool list in Vericut and right click on the tool you are wanting to check and select add optipath I think is what it says. You then can set limits for that tool based on various criteria, including volume removal, stepover, and depth of cut. I will not run any dynamic or optirough toolpath without doing this. I find the volume removal to be the best indicator for the dynamic/optirough paths. I avoid medial entry whenever possible to avoid volume removal spikes I use helix entry. Also make sure your rounding radius is at least as big as your stepover to avoid possible spikes. I almost forgot after you set the tool up for optipath limits in Vericut you then need to in your setup at the top of your tree check the box that says "Check Cutting Limits" for this to actually work. This is in Vericut version 7.1 whatever. It would be nice for mastercam verify to be able to calculate volume removal in real time like this in Verify. Would be a good enhancement request!

I have noticed it only seems to work when you select the depths rather than let it do it by model?

Anyone get this one to work at all yet? In the triangular mesh toolpaths under multi-axis? I have got nothing at all from this so far. Maybe I am doing something wrong. Any clues? Thanks, Kevin C.

Do you have vericut? I have found some times dynamic/optirough will sometimes engage more material than it is supposed to. Vericut can find those spots if you set up your tool to calculate volume removal rate and set a limit on it and then turn on check cutting limits. I wouldn't be nearly as receptive about using these toolpaths without vericut to back me up. I think that would be a good enhancement to have for a future release of Mastercam, the ability for verify to calculate volume removal rate!

OK, it did fail on the cylinder at .001 tolerance. My chaining tolerance for the loft was set to .0005.

I am not seeing this problem. I am using X5 on XP 32 bit service pack 2. I created a rectangle made a flat boundary surface turned it in to a sheet solid and then thickened it just fine. Did the same thing with a circle. Then I also lofted to flat circles together and it made a solid cylinder just fine. My tolerance was set at the default .005 though? That may be the difference?

I think he means the order they are listed in the view manager. There is a way, but it is kind of a PITA. Just make copies of the WCS that you want to move down the list and then delete the original. You can manipulate the order they are in that way. Kevin C.

Craig, In your config file, under files, is the Restore entire toolpath data in File, Open. Is this checkbox checked? My only guess is maybe it is not?

Yeah I was thinking the same thing Colin, The only problem here is all of our endmills the flute length matches the diameter, so I would have to special order one. It is a lot different than how we normally machine around here. The max depth I could probably take with one of our 1/2" would be about ."45. Thanks for the input everyone. As far as the video goes I would have liked to have seen it also. But there was no way I was going to open the door and stick my head in!

Check out the Iscar Quick Calculator on the forum FTP. I checked what you posted and to maintain a .005 chipload with chip thinning on that tool the adjusted chip load would be .0063 FPT. Which gives you a spindle speed of 3629 and 91 IPM feed.

Well I ran the test with a 1" generic 2 fl carbide endmill .900 Axial .250 Radial and 577 IPM. It ran real nice almost silent never using more than about 25% of the spindle meter. I think I could probably even get away with increasing the radial stepover to .375 and leave the depth the same. It sounded that good! The bad: The surface rough pocket toolpath beat the dynamic toolpath in runtime. I ran it on the same geometry at 450 IPM with 80% stepover and .250 stepdown. The reason this toolpath was faster is the size of the pocket. Mastercam said the dynamic should have been faster but the pocket was not large enough for the dynamic toolpath to get up to full speed. Too many small moves when going around the boundaries I had setup. Although the surface rough pocket ran faster it didn't sound near as good with some full width passes and getting in to the corners, the spindle load meter was all over the place. I think you have to pay attention to the geometry and pick the right spots to use dynamic mill. In this case it wouldn't really pay off.

I understand what you want now. I think your SOL. The only thing you can do is make copies of your original solids and put them on a different level.

Yes there is. Pulldown menu. Solids/ Boolean/ NA. I think it has a red symbol next to it. It will let you pick one or the other or both to keep.

See the attached picture Joe, The green circle area is where it is at. I messed with the rounding radius yesterday and it helped but then the toolpath wouldn't even go in to those areas. It probably needs a smaller tool but if you do that the toolpath takes longer to run than the old style way. Thanks, Kevin C. Doc1.doc

Hopefully this will get ran today or tomorrow. As a side note I took a few minutes to set up some opti-path parameters in Vericut even though we do not have the opti-path license you can set an max metal removal rate and it will warn you when you go over it. When I set it up I expected to see the dynamic toolpath maintain a fairly consistent MRR but that was not the case. The base MRR I was shooting for is about 98 Cu/in minute. But there were certain spots in there where it was up to 127 Cu/in minute? I did see where CNC said they were still working on this toolpath, perhaps that will get better in the next release? For what it is worth I also ran the same geo through the Volumill web nc based free app and the results were about the same, maybe even a little worse. I will update again after we run the test.

Joe, Oh yeah already ran vericut. Yeah I have kind of went back and forth on the depth of cut vs the width of cut. I went with the lower depth of cut to start with because it seems a little less radical compared to what we usually do around here. If it runs real smooth like this I will probably double the depth of cut and maybe cut the radial to 25% vs 37.5%. Will probably have to wait until Monday to run, the MAG guru is only here part of the day today. Kevin C.

Ok if anyone is interested here are the settings I am going to start with for the mag 3 test. 28000 RPM's 577 IPM with 37.5% stepover. Which with my 1.0" 2 flute carbide endmill works out to .010 chipload per tooth when taking chip thinning in to effect. I am going to start with a .455 stepdown which gives me a moderate MRR of 98.45, requiring approx. 25 horesepower. This machine has an 85 or so horsepower spindle and I have seen a video of a mag3 5-axis horizontal online removing as much as 300 Cu/in minute. So this initial test should use roughly 1/3 of the machines capability. Anyone have any opinions on these initial settings? I will let you know as soon as it runs how it goes. Thanks, Kevin C.

They need to make these like the multiaxis toolpaths where you can bring in an STL mesh in to your file put it on it's own level and select it that way. So later down the road if that STL gets deleted it doesn't matter.

Oh yeah I guess that matters somewhat! Material is Aluminum. I have experience with the harder stuff, just not sure how hard I can push the aluminum.

Hey Guys, I am wanting to try to test this on a mag 3. What would be some safe settings to start at for a 1" endmill. With a 50K spindle I don't want to tear anything up? The machine has a 30K RPM spindle. I would like to do some roughing with a 1" endmill with about a .900 stepdown. What kind of stepover would be safe. Keep in mind this is a high speed five axis. Thanks guys, Kevin C.

I really can't send a file but just try drawing a flat square surface at system origin and rotate it slightly around the origin and try to run a mesh toolpath on it and tell the toolpath to stay normal to surface. I couldn't even get it to do that. Of course I may be doing something wrong. Just try that and see what you get. Thanks, Kevin C.

I am not getting the results I think I should with these, of course it is hard tell what kind of results to expect because there is nothing in the help file on these and very little in the whats new. I am having trouble with either not getting any toolpath or not getting it to do what I tell it to do with the tool axis. From what I can tell these must still be a work in progress?

You might try deleting your groups also.

Thanks for trying Odin, But it didn't work. I guess I will have to bug IT.

I was wondering if I needed to post that. It was in our profiles in the old forum. It is [email protected] Thanks Odin.