quote: It seems to be the problem of not enough cutting angle so he needs to cut down more then once to create the chamfer. If the problem is that the insert isn't large enough to do the cut, then won't stepping straight down bring the holder into contact with the workpiece?

THe HASP used to work and now it doesn't, right? Could be that the DNC cable, with the shorted pins, damaged the lock or corrupted the information in it. You'll need to get the lock replaced. Make sure to tell your dealer what has happened, especially that the lock used to work, dosn't work now, and that you've tried it on two different boxes. It will shorten your trouble-shooting time considerably.

quote: Clause /Thomas quote: too bad i was serious. I think it would be productive for me. I think it would be fun. It would also transfer some of the more common mouse clicks to the feet. Can any of you forum members make some kind of adaptor? I especially like the 'strafe' option... Seriously though, looking at some of the ways 3D game systems allow the user to interact with the virtual environent might be useful. The needs aren't all that different.

quote: Have been switching between 2 comps home and work. Dnc machine quit(over network) tried to hook up to back of my comp.with adapter into hasp to dnc from mastercam, ever since then I get (sim not initialized) when starting up. The HASP is on the paralell port. DNC is done out of serial ports, as you can't get RS232 out of a paralell port even with an adaptor. Many 25-pin serial cables have one or more pairs of the pins shorted, which could keep the HASP from doing it's thing when the DNC cable is attached to it. Try taking the adapter off of the serial cable and plugging it into a serial port. If you don't have a 25-pin serial port on that computer, try getting a 9-pin to 25-pin adaptor and see if that will work. As a nine-pin connection has six more pins than a serial conneciton actually requires, it should still work.

Depth cuts? Wouldn't multi-passes make more sence for this job, or am I missing something?

quote: 9 weeks, two days a week, total of 60 hours for $175 in Florida. Is this real? Community College Tuition in California is $11.00 a credit-hour, and my classes are all three-hour ones. $33.00+fees and books.

quote: I was hoping to save files onto a floppy, but with this file size I wont be able to save many. When I put tool information on it it will only get bigger.When you save the file, be sure to remove the checkmark from the 'Save thumbnail image with geometry' option at the bottom of the file save dialog box. Those bitmapped preview images are useful, but they add between 100K and 200K to the file size. A file with a single rectangle in it and no toolpaths is 140KB with the 'thumbnail' option on, and only 12KB with that option off. What I reccomend to my students is that they turn that option off if they are going to save to a floppy disk and/or for e-mailing, and turn that option on when they save to anything else.

quote: I just upgraded to v9. I calibrated the tools on the top of the part as usual but now the machine thinks the reference point is somewhere above where it should be. What's happening? Thanks Are your offsets correct in the .NC file?

How is the origin messed up, and what plotting options are you selecting? If the origin seems to be shifted from what you selected, it could simply be the type of HPGL that you are sending to the plotter.

quote: When you offer Mastercam Instructor Certification, what will the cost be? If you don't want to publish the price, could you e-mailme directly?At this time I am not sure what the costs will be. Proably more than our train-the-trainer classes, but even that is somewhat up in the air. As soon as we get it sorted, I'll let you know and post info on our web site.

I'm using a Gateway Solo 9550 for MasterCAM v8 and v9 and it works very well. It's got an Nvidia Gforce2 GO video board, which is about as good as it gets in notebooks. For CAD/CAM use, I'd limit myself to the higer-end desktop replacement notebooks. The other types tend to have slower and less capible shared-memory video boards, and those can give you trouble.

quote: Now that’s what I want to do but looks like I am have to cover it so cant do it right now. Mike Frimann (sp?) has talked to me about going and a few of the other dealers. . I need to get out there. Are going for the classes then taking the test? The way it works is I have to take the certification test, then go to the classes to learn how the certification program itself works. If all goes well, we should be offering the instructor certifiction classes at our facility by the end of the year. We'll announce it via our e-mail newsletter as soon as we have all the details worked out. If you haven't signed up for our e-mail newsletter, drop me a line and I'll put you on the list.

quote: Well Rick, truth be told, I was a student at Mt. San Antonio College back around 1993 and Paten and Assocoates was pretty close to worthless for me. I found the staff's knowledge of Mastercam fair at best. Sorry you had a bad experence with my company. Paton and Associcates didn't have a full-time, dedicated technical support staff until I started working there in '94, and it wasn't until after v5 shipped that I started getting up to speed in MasterCAM (had to learn AutoCAD first). Prior to that we mostly had to forward inquiries to CNC software or to some outside consultants we had arrangements with. quote: I sent the paperwork to get an Educational Seat several times and never got any response. While I cannot now find out what happened to those requests, I will tell you that I'll do whatever I can to see that it dosen't happen in the future. If necessary, you can contact me directly either by calling my office at (800)826-0570 or e-mailing me at [email protected]

My classes are going OK, though my school's shop is in a state of transition right now. Part of it is being turned into a classroom, so we had to get rid of some of the older manual machines. When all is said and done we'll be down to 5 manual mills, 6 manual lathes, and our Haas VF-2, VF-4, and HL-2 CNCs. I'm getting 24 new computers though, so it's not all bad. Is your school going to do the MasterCAM ceritification classes? I'm heading off to the training next month.

Don't know how helpful Paton and Associates will be? Why I oughttta.... There are several places that teach MasterCAM in your area. Jay seems like a decent enough guy, and you could do far worse than to take one of his classes. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Glendale College has a wonderful MasterCAM program. I may be somewhat biased though, as I'm the guy teaching it. If you do want to give us a call (it's 800-826-0570, btw) we can let you know what schools near you have MasterCAM. Wherever you do decide to go, be sure to give us a call about a student version of MasterCAM.

Linearization tolerance was the key, thanks. I know I musta been doing somethign wrong.

While playing with the mpmaster post, I generated a 3D contour toolpath with an arc in the YZ plane to see if the post would allow it to be turned into an arc move. When I looked at the NC file, I saw a point-to-point path. Double-checking with the NCI file showed that it also had a point-to-point path, which seemed odd. At first I thought it was becasue I selected a flat end mill, but I got the same results with a ball mill. Then I tried turning the arc into a draft surface, crated a surface-finish-paralell path on it with the ball end mill, and saw that the NCI file and the post both correctly put out a series of G02/G03 moves in the YZ plane. Am I doing somethign wrong, or will MasterCAM v9 not look for arc moves in a 3D contour toolpath? I'll upload the file if it will help, but the drawing is simple enough - a 6x6 rectangle in the top construction plane with a 1" radius arc created in the side construction plane and centered at the mid-point of one of the sides, trimmed appropriately. The tools I tried were a 1/4" ball and a 1/4" flat endmill.

I've got a Quadro card in my workstation in the office, but spend most of my 'quality time' with MasterCAM on my notebook, which has an Nvidia Gforce2 GO board. Both of them work like a champ. My companie's training lab is all equipped with Nvidia Gforce2MX boards which are cheap, trouble free, and offer decent performance. Nvidia makes some great stuff in the low-cost, high performance area, as does 3D Labs. I've not had a bad experence with any boards from either company. I can't say the same thing about ATI.

Well, the short answer is that you can't, at least not directly. What you can do is put a checkmark in the 'edit' box when posting, then save the file using PFE32, which does remember where you put the last file you saved. You can use a script file (i.e. a windows batch file) to delete the 'orphaned' .nc files in the default directory automaticly at start-up. Taking a quick look at the posted code isn't all that bad a habit to get into. If it saves you having to negotiate the directory tree every time you post, well then that's just gravy.

The system chaining options. When in a select menu, click on 'chain' and then click on 'options' The only difficulties I've had with boundries is when there is something wrong with the chain. Can you upload the file in question?

Have you analyzed the chain? Defects too small to easily see can cause the trouble you are having, as can certan chain options.

The tool can touch the check surface. What MasterCAM won't do is pass the tool through the check surface or generate toolpaths on the check surface. If you don't want to tool to touch the surface, you need to set the 'leave stock' value to something greater than 0.