No, I want to load the subs to the internal card since that main memory is so small, and call them from the main program. As long as I name my files the same as what has appeared to be "registered" already I can run. So I can start this project tomorrow now but not being able to leave things named the way I have them already will annoy me to no end.

Ok does the program numbers have to be registered somehow? I can take my program and give it the file name of one of the programs already on the internal card. Doing that allows me to call it using m198. Any name other than what is already shown in the internal card will give a program not found error.

The settings are set so that you can run off the internal card using M198. But anything that I have loaded off my flash drive onto the internal card it will not recognize.

I have looked at the programs on the internal card and tried to copy what I have seen there. I have taken the O number out and the % at the top just like the programs in the card and still no dice. I have tried with and without line numbers as well.

Hi guys, I am trying to load programs to the internal card of our Mori Seiki from my usb drive. Every program that I have loaded when I try to open it and look at it on the control I get the specified file is an incorrect format error. I thought it was possible that I just couldn't load from my flash drive but I took a program from the machine memory and punched it to my flash drive and then read that same file from the flash drive onto the internal card and was able to look at it. I don't know what I am missing but this is starting to make me ill. Jon

lol The title says its a FZ 12K D, but seeing that they have 12K S on the body, I think someone put the wrong lable on the covers there.

Yeah I was looking at that book on Amazon just this morning and considering purchasing it.

I have done similar to you Terry, for programming the 4 axis Makino's at my last job, but that XY location was based on the center of rotation of the B axis and the Z was top of the pallet. It still followed the convention that your Origin was at center of rotation. And that is easy to do with TABLE/TABLE machines. The machine that the company is looking at buying is a Chiron FZ 12K S with a Fanuc 31i A control.

Jay, I think it does, unfortunately I don't have the quote on the machine to see what options they have quoted for us. I have the machine data sheet here that lists the horizontal and vertical distances from the spindle face to the swivel axis. Is the pivot point something that we have to calculate directly on the machine with a tool?

That could be the case, as is we haven't gotten the machine yet so it could also change from a head/table configuration. Me nor my collegue has ever programmed a head/table config. and as there are 31 of these part numbers that we will most likely have to complete in an insanely short time, we are scrambling to figure out as much as we can and prepare ourselves for what we are about to embark on. I came here to see how others may be handling doing things on a similar machine. We had to get the post to put out G43.4 which cleared up some of the undesirable results we seen in vericut. I just want to make sure that we are not overlooking a way of setting up the wcs that would make programming easier.

The way we got it currently set is X is at the face of the rotary Y and Z are at center of the the rotary. Rotary rotates about the X axis. The head rotates about the Y axis and the spindle is offset from the pivot point of the head, which further complicates things. We have played around programming the parts some and ran through vericut to see what we are producing and we are getting mixed results which leads me to believe that maybe we are looking at the wcs setup wrong.

I know in setting up a coordinate system for a part that you are programming on a 4th axis machine you normally want the coordinate system based on center of rotation. Same with setting up the coordinate system for a part for a 5 axis machine that is TABLE/TABLE. My question is how would you handle the coordinate system for a HEAD/TABLE 5 axis machine? Never set up a file for programming a HEAD/TABLE configuration and we have some parts coming up that we are buying a machine that is a HEAD/TABLE 5 axis machine. Trying to get a leg up on things before we are down to crunch time. Thanks in advance Jonathan

Thanks guys, we got a few days before the material gets here and I was trying to get a little info so that we don't go into this totally blind.

Every search I have done on this material says its tough to machine, we are grinding most features but some need to be cut with an endmill. Anyone out there cutting this type of material? Do you have any suggestions on tooling and speeds and feeds? Thanks in advance Jonathan

Thanks, I will talk to them tomorrow about it.

Yeah I caught that g, I actually got an email letting me know about the release of beta 2 for MCfSW last year. But when I went to log in to download it, it wouldn't let me log in. Do we have to request each year to be apart of beta testing, or if we were apart of the last beta testing do we automatically roll into the next rounds of beta testing?

I would like to be apart of the beta for that. We meet your criteria. edit: oops seen this was posted last year nevermind then

Without looking at your file its hard to tell what may be causing the problem. When you set up your planes in the toolpath all that will impact things as well, with the way you are describing the x and y locations being off with the signs it kind of sounds like you may have your WCS set up wrong.

Usually when it posts the negative sign it is trying to force the machine to go in a specific direction, which will depend on how your machine is setup as to whether that forces CW or CCW movement. Have you tried it on the machine in MDI to see the affect of the negative sign? On our VMC's our post uses positive and negative signs to control which way the indexer will rotate. You could try to set it to shortest direction (0-360). I am not 100% sure where it is, its either in the machine definition or the control definition, I always have to look for it when I need to change that. edit found it: Go to machine definition and double click on your indexer and under Axis supports continuous positioning select Shortest direction, absolute angle and that should make it all positive.

I don't think I have had that problem with volumill, but can't remember if I have ever used a bullnose with it.

I just loaded it and haven't had a chance to try it yet. But I got a new part coming up which I will be able to give it a shot on. The constant chip thickness seems interesting as well as the non-concentric milling.

It just appears that their new products will only work up til X5 MU1. Which really sucks still, as the volumill was a complement to mastercam not a competitor.

Here is how it is here at our shop: There are three of us who do the bulk of the programming. We are called engineers(None of us have a degree although I am working toward mine) and we handle all aspects. We quote, we design fixtures, tools, gages etc. We do all of the programming, order all the tools needed, the material to make the fixtures and gages. I was once blamed by our boss for a job being late, even after I asked the production control to put the part on the schedules a month before it was due on our customers dock, needless to say it didn't get put on the schedule, the part ended up late and the boss told me I am responsible for the part from beginning to end so I guess that means we do scheduling too .

I'm not sure how it is now but at one time MI1 set the post to use P's for offsets. MI2 set it to absolute or incremental programming, and our MI3 was like yours 0=M250 1=M251 and so on. During our transition to x5 it appears we have lost some of that.

I know our 3 A51's are set to M251 when they start up.