quote: They were originally designed to work with ball mills only. I wonder where he is getting his information??? These paths were fenomonal for cutting with flat endmills to create very small radius' at the bottom of a steep wall. Trode makers would have had a very hard time without it. (I know, I was one of them )

Make sure your tool diameter and arbor diameter are set to the same number. (even if it isn't in real life) This will bog down verify tremendously if not.

The reason this path wont work is because the bottom arc is extended past it's center point from a right side view. Therefore the tool can not get down to the floor because of interference with the "tip" of the arc on the bottom. To fix it go to the right side view, create a line verticle at the center of the bottom arc and trim it to it. Regen your path (make sure you combine your views. When I brought your file in it had 1 arc out of view.) And change your Along cutter comp to left. Hope this gets you going again. - Jason

2D swept operations are very nice. I have been using them for many.... many years. As a matter of fact, I have never used 3D swept. There are just a couple things to remember... Always have your across geometry on a 90° plane. (ie. if you look down at a circle from top view it should be at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, or 9:00. (it has always worked well for me this way.) You also need to make sure you combine views before you try to program it. (If you forget and the path is all garbled you can always combine views and then regen. It takes only seconds.) Also, try to always use lines and arcs. It has been a while since I tried to do this with a spline. It may work now but I'm not sure. This will produce a very nice small program very quickly. (Unlike the surfacing programs which are also very nice but can get quite large and take some time to compute.) Maybe you can try them some more and see if this helps you. [ 04-07-2009, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Jason B. ]

did you make sure and "combine views" before programming? This is a must for 2D swept ops. Just a thought.

Cool Stuff. I'm just a 3 axis guy so this is all pretty neat. I'd would've loved to have gotten into 4 and 5 axis stuff but I never got enough call for it. I'm now trying to drive more towards design and less programming. Take care.

How do they measure from the center of the 4th axis to get it to be exactly 1.310? Is there a reference point in the machine to check from? Just curious.

I just received an email (The quarterly "Shop Talk" from Mastercam) and it points out that if you have an arbor diameter a different size than your tool diameter called out in your tool settings dialogue that it will cause your verify to run much slower than if not. They site an example as 25mm arbor with 24.96mm diameter took 11 minutes and both at 25mm took only 2.5 minutes. I know some of you have mentioned problems with verify taking so long and I don't know if all of you get this quarterly so I thought I should pass this information along in case it will help someone here. Good luck. - Jason

Very nicely put Ron. But I have to ask..... What is MMT? - Jason

Yes, Do what they have been telling you about right clicking in the ops manager to rename the .nc file names. Even if they all have the same name already. This happened to me before. they all had the same name but I had to selct them all at once, right click, and rename again as a group to get it to work.

Fair enough. Your example shows that you will benefit from the solids in Mastercam. For my situation, Very rarely do I need to modify something once it is in Mastercam. The money I have saved over the years by not purchasing or maintaining solids for Mastercam has in fact payed for my CAD software package. For my specific situation this is extremely beneficial since I have been a user of Mastercam and my CAD software equally for over 16 years. It is very beneficial to me to continue to use my design software for model creation and manipulation since I have such extensive expierience with it and I am proficient with it. Mastercam has paved the way for me to keep using both. And we all know how much of a CAD software Mastercam isn't. IC6, I think we all agree that you need some sort of solids package. It just depends on your application as to where your going to benefit the most from it. My company is geared more towards the new product design end of the market, therefore my needs lean more toward the design end of the spectrum. therefor I need more power in my design package and less in my machining package. Hopefully you can take our banter and put it to good use. Take care. - Jason

Ron, If your going to post in a forum, PLEASE read the entire forum so that you understand the conversation. Let me try to spell this a little clearer for EVERYONE to understand. (long sigh) Like I already said.... I'm not saying no one should buy the Masteram solids package! (Here I am having to repeat myself for you) quote: If you had solids and it saved you just 10 minutes a week verse not Like I said already.... (again repeating myself) You NEED a solids package to stay in competition with todays market. I ALREADY HAVE A SOLIDS PACKAGE!!! Therefore buying another solids package is fruitless and money squandering. If you want to do this, then buy all means please do. quote: We make all of our set-up sheets using solids. I don't. I use a very simple yet to the point set up sheet that gives a clear and concise package of information to the operator using a .set file that has been customized to my liking. Why in the world you need to use solids or surfaces to make a setup sheet is beyond me but I'm not here to judge you. If it's working for you than stick with it. quote: in our company your way of thinking would be costing us 10 to 30 times the cost of solids by not having that capability. Again... My way of thinking is HAVE SOLIDS!!! It just doesn't need to be Mastercam's. So you are telling me that because you make such lavish setup sheets you are required to buy a solids packgage? I think it is more the case that since you have the solids package, you are, in fact, using it to make your setup sheets a little more than they might need to be? I'm certain you would still make just as much money if you didn't make such a setup sheet. I've been in this business long enough to know that a setup sheet isn't what makes you your $100 per hour. quote: not having solids in this day and age is the same thing in my book. Again Ron.... read the entire post please. I AGREE WITH YOU.

quote: You've just handcuffed yourself because you said "can't" and now you loose. To be more precise.... I can't in mastercam because they want more money to do it. I can still do it. quote: You can do the same with solids by face selection. I do it all the time. Next... I do it all the time too.... using surfaces created from importing my solid. The only difference is that I'm doing it a lot cheaper than you are. quote: WCS will take care of everything. It's even easier and faster then x-forming the solid IMO. WCS also works better for change recognition too. That's my point. you don't need to move solids around. So if you "can't" it doesn't matter.

also keep in mind that Keycreator is a NON-parametric design package.

In Ops manager, create new machine group, then copy all operations to the new group. Delete the existing (old machine group) and try to repost. I wouldn't recomend saving during this until you are sure it worked or at least save as new file name before messing with the file in case it gets messed up. I don't know if this will work but it's worth a try if you haven't already.

EazyE, I guess I would try exporting as iges. In the selection options use... iges Manifold solid B-rep objects (iges type 186) iges write flavor set to "Solidworks" - Jason

CNC PRO You have mail.

OK. now I'm in.

As of 10:00 am can't access the FTP site. Just get internet error. ???

Sure. I'll be out of the office early this afternoon but I'll do what I can. - Jason

quote: Plain and simple- If you don't have solids, your at a disadvantage with your competitors that do. Absolutely. Today's world of design is so solids driven you really need some sort of solids package to stay competitive.

Yes. Pete was instrumental in finding why "ghost" entities were showing up on level managers but nothing was their. He was quick and thourough with what he could find out and letting me/us know. Thanks Pete

Yes you can machine solids. You just can't move them around or manipulate them. You need to position them as you want and then export to Mastercam. Then import them and go to town. The only thing you can't do is FBM. Which, at this point, is no big loss. At least for most users. There may be more cutterpaths that are solid specific but I'm not sure. I always import the geometry as surfaces because of the greater control in programming. (drive/check surface selection, etc.)

It's not a secret or anything. I use Keycreator for design and Mastercam for programming. Keycreator is basically the evolution of Cadkey. If you grew up with Cadkey like me then Keycreator will be almost second nature to learn. I can't do anything on a consistent basis without compensation (after all my business is CAD/CAM ) but I might be able to help you out with this one depending on how long it takes and the outcome I get. I haven't actually done this but see that it has an option to create polylines so that is why I said TRY not DO.

If you would like me to try it, I use a software that has an option of converting geometry to polylines. I can try.