Thankyou gentlemen amazingly my insert was drawn with a .8mm rad and in the custom settings I nominated .8mm rad, so I changed the setting to .4mm rad the tool was then fine, so in an effort to stay as close as possible to the actual tool rad I changed it to .79mm rad which was also fine. Gary

I am in work shortly and will revisit geometry. Gary

I have custom tool geometry saved on level 15 within my part file as I have many times before.When I look in tool parameters the graphic icon of the tool shows an oversized insert with unreconisable shank, my back plot looks fine, my verify has the insert ok but shank is wrong.I cant find fault with tool sketch, does anyone have ideas, I have already had 1 hour an got nowhere. Gary

When feeds by material group is used, how do you control the plunge and retract rates for your operation type? Mine seem to end up as 50% appx of the cutting feed value.I tend to have the by tool option selected in properties but still nominate a material and when I want the operation to react to the material I press calculate speed and feed in the tool edit dialougue which works for me apart from the plunge and retract rates. Gary

I have never had this but I would be looking at the tool set up. If you change the hand of a tool or reverse it it can cause a spindle direction change. Is the tool you are using a grooving tool that has neautral hand (no left or right)?

Active report in Lathe (havnt tried mill) gives me tool images but not operation images. After clicking set up sheet, it blinks its way through images of my operations does some other behind the scenes stuff, then presents page one of what I expected would be the images it just blinked its way through, but I have tool images and text relating to the group operations but no operation images. Can anyone help? Gary

Sorry Greg I also think I am wrong the Haas price US is $40,000. I have nearly talked myself out of going cheap but with our application just face milling, slot cutting, and M48 or bigger thread milling, the $75000 saving over our prefered Doosan brand is tempting. Gary

Point taken but in Australia the price we pay for a machine of same brand and type can be 3 times what you guys pay. A case in point a Haas machine centre I think a Vf1, is around $22000 to you is around $70000 here thats both in USA dollars! Gary

Anyone heard of these machining centres, we have been offered a Macro Acceler at a great price and it also has good features and specs, does anyone no anything of them. Gary

Tooling here is the key.Vargus has some new tooling that takes carbide inserts each with centre screw clamping, we used it M36 x 4 and it did it a treat in k1045, 2205 may be different. M36 x 2 shouldnt give much trouble either method.But if you are talking about coarse series threads that are two thread diameters deep, I would favour thread mill with a vargus cutter as discribed. Iscar multimaster go ok and should handle M36. Gary

Forgot the question earlier, we are not toolmakers, I guess we are cnc operator programers more general engineering, our guys cost us around $33. aussie per hour, that includes holidays and pensions (4 weeks annual leave, I think 7 public holidays and 5 days per year not requiring a doctors certificate, plus 10 days with doctors certificate). Socialism is a wonderfull thing for some, although I must say I cant complain with the effort of our guys. Gary

Many thanks all, I greatly appreciate the comments. Interestingly it seems in Ausralia we pay almost double the price for an American machine that you guys do in the states. If a Haas (yes I have the spelling now) were available at around $44000 I would buy it alas it is not. Gary

Thanks for the replies, the price for the retrofitted bridgeport type (new machine + contol) has been quoted from a reputable supplier, the Hass price was based on several years ago we got them to quote a 1000mm x 500 x 500 (apprx) and it was $140000. I will get current pricing an a VF1, and do a proper comparison. The supplier for the bridgeport type also offer what they call a bed mill, with a 1900mm table and 1500mm of travel x axis Prototrak fitted for $58000. Gary

Thanks for your input,and its difficult to argue with, but here is our thinking on it. A Bridgport type machine to us about $21000 the retro fit $18000, a Hass would be around $100000. That difference would have to be redeemed working 10 -20 hrs a week on 1offs or fixture work. We have the production CNC's and are aware of there worth but I just feel there may be a place for the prototrak prviding it is reliable. By the way my figures are aussie dollars. Gary

We are considering using a prototrak cnc control, retrofitted to a knee type turret mill. I would like to hear from any uses that can attest to its reliability and general usefullness. We have a good manual machinist who is not comfortable with our production cnc machines (mostly fanuc g code),but from the sales information I have seen may respond well to the prototak control. It will be light work jigs and fixtures or short run stuff. Any opinions would be appreciated. Gary

If you create geometry at the starting point of the thread to represent the form you want, lets say round, then create tool geometry and copy it touching tangently to the thread form in enough positions for each one to represent one pass.Then create however many thread ops you need to represent all the passes, each op start point is clicked on the tool geometry for its start point and cut as a single pass.It can be done, but this could end up like bible translation so hopefully my explanation gives you a clue, failing that let me know and I will come up with a file example, I have done it a few times.

My part model is not as functional as a part modeled in SW, it is heavily faceted. It is easy to dimension and the appearance is better but you wouldnt call it a solid part. So I think this qualifies as a false alarm.

This was my proceedure and it may have worked becuase my source stock was a solidworks part saved as stl. 1. create part in sw to be used as stock. 2. Save as stl. 3. link file as stock in mc. 4. after verify save as stl. 5. open in sw and run feature recognition. I assume if a solid model for stock was used in mc it would work the same. I have to reconfirm this in work today, and pehaps this doesnt work with any stl, just one created this way.

I will play with it today I did it for fist time yesterday and yes the part I converted was machined with 2d paths.

Many on the forum proberbly no this, but if you verify a part and save as an stl, then open that file in solidworks (in my case 2010) and use a function called feature recognition, it converts your stl to a solidworks part with as far as I can tell (did for first time today) all the funtionality that goes with it. I for one will find this very handy.

We like mc lathe, we program several different machines, all code generated by mc. Each machine has a laptop with mastercam access for fine tuning. We do chucking and bar feeding work and have very few complaints. Make sure your posts are sorted out and always set up your stock and update tool by tool. The programs are effecient with very little wasted travel. Gary

How do I indentify the card I should have? Gary

I got it, in cofiguration the hardware acceleration I disabled it. Trial and error and eventually success.Sorry for false alarm.

I have just loaded x4 onto a laptop,I have it running on 1 tower system and other laptops. In design I draw a line but dont see anything until I refresh screen or clear colours, I have tried many things in cofiguration but nothing so far, can anyone help?

I have Mastercam and solidworks, so does the mastercam add in within solidworks hold any advantages? Gary