Better graphics would be nice, but the first thing I do with my Solidworks files is to take all of the unneeded geometry and dump it to a level I usually mark "Unused Geometry" If MasterCam were more friendly, I might even try to draw just that geometry that is needed in MasterCam, but it is about a decade behind in the "intuitive" department. User friendly and MasterCam are not something I generally use in the same sentence.

Maybe I should have said "Comp Type"... Anyway, I think I finally got it straight, Thanks.

After some further research, Heeler had it right on, and ARP was right too. Getting the tool diameter as a comp is a real surprise. I ended up using "Control" but got the same results with compensation type "off". I got the same effect as bumping up the tool wear by telling the machine the tool was a little smaller than it was, just like Heeler said. I even caught the fact that if I wanted to take .001 that I had to take half off each side on the closed contour cut. DS, I found that Haas had sent me some code for a VQCPS and put a WIPS on the machine. The Visual Quick Code didn't work, and there were problems with the IPS. A new install made things work a lot more reasonably. Now the world is good! Thanks, Dan Thanks all!

In a different topic post an issue came up regarding tool comp. Post comments included: quote: Edit/Delete Post Are you using wear comp????? That way you use zero's in the geometry page of your control. One less thing to have to remember to change. There are other advantages as well. Also...standard tooling in your machine will reduce the occurance of length offset errors. They will already be set. To this I replied: quote: I have been told I have to use 'control comp' since I have Renishaw Probes. Is this correct? The response was: quote: No, the probe doesn't have anything to do with cutter compensation. Today I tried to cut using wear comp. What apparently happens is that MasterCam X2 pulls a number from the Diameter Register on the offset page and offsets the cutter by that amount. Without the tool probe, this register is apparently normally zero. With probes, this number is the actual diameter of the tool, (I would have thought that wear comp would have used the number in the tool wear column but oh well). My part ended up WAY too big. I checked the In House Solutions (Davis) book and the information there was consistent with what I observed. SO, I have to surmise that the probes DO in fact have a lot to do with the attempt to use wear comp (at least on a Haas). I called the local instructor who told me without hesitation that you can't use wear comp with a probe system on a Haas Super Mini; you have to use control comp. I reworked the file using control comp and reposted, and it cut perfectly. Now the question! Losing the ability to kick a little wear into the tool to clean up the part by running it again is a pretty serious loss. I hate the thought of having to go back and offset geometry by .0005, reverify, repost, regraph and all to make another clean up pass. Is there a work around that enables tool probe users to get the same effect as if they were able to use wear comp?

I have been told I have to use 'control comp' since I have Rennishaw Probes. Is this correct?

Rickster said: "You must pick up set or the origin on your work piece, on the CNC, the same as your origin on your geometry so your tool path cuts what you have simulated in Mastercam." I think at some point the setup becomes second nature... and people focus on the part origin. They can 'see' their part inside the stock so stock placement becomes second nature. It is possible Rickster actually makes his part origin the "same as your origin on your geometry", but that is not always the most convenient. Take for instance a part that is round with a bolt circle of six holes and a larger center hole. In this case, your geometry (part origin) was likely chosen as the center of the large center hole, and in this case the stock origin could be left in the center of square stock large enough to accommodate the part. This is consistent with Rickstser's comment. In an example where you have something like a single speed handle for a vise (see any parts catalog for single speed handle if you don't know what it is) a possible geometry origin is the center of the hexagonal hole that fits over the vises hex. Not only is that the center of the hexagonal hole, but it is also the center of the circular part of the bottom of the handle... in this case you don't want the stock origin to be in the center of the stock (which will likely be a rectangular piece of metal). Here you want your stock origin to be something like the back corner, where you can place it at something like (X,Y,Z) -1.00, 1.00, .005 [the single speed handle has a bottom lobe with a diameter of about 1.625 and a radius of half of .8125] This allows the part origin to be a 0,0,0,, and since the part is about 3.5 inches long and 1.625 wide, you can see that your stock needs to be at least 3.5 long and 1.625 wide. If you set your stock origin to be at -1,1,.005, and the stock is 2 inch wide 3/4 inch aluminum extrusion - you would want to make the stock at least 4 inches long. If in manufacturing, you can save a lot of metal by getting you stock tuned to minimize waste... but if just doing a one off with scrap, you can do something like I mentioned above. [ 11-04-2007, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: DanR ]

gcode - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Thou shall always single block first approach moves on new programs. 5. Thou shall always watch "distance to go" and heed its advice. DTG is your vey best friend ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Good ones. I didn't catch the fact that the larger tool radius had me somewhat 'inside' my path, but also somewhat outside. The machine didn't know my tool was .4 inches longer and three times the diameter of that shown in the tool offset. It took me a while to figure out what happened since everything seemed right but the cut. I learned to take new programs down to .5, and .1 and always single block and option stop at 5% rapids on a new program. When I was at .5 I thought I was at .1 and the difference of .4 on the tool length created a mindset where I saw .1 to go and thought it was dead on. Attention to detail required... Usually, the instructor said, if everything is right at .1 above, you can take the single block off and go... I would think that tool depth and diameter problems are the ones that could get you the most. I should have seen the initial cut cutting deeper than the machine code told me, but when that coolant starts to hit the tool, you can hardly see anything. Somebody suggested RainX, but I don't know how long it will hold up being pelted by the Blaser coolant. The 'rest of the story' is that I took my unintentionally redesigned vise handle out of the soft jaws and finished it today. Everybody liked it better than the standard one... and it is lighter weight as well. I guess anybody can do it right, but there is something to be said about being able to recover (and learn) from your mistakes. Fortunately it wasn't something that had to be done to a particular specification. Thanks.

I am not sure that these explanations clarify the issue. Stock origin is whatever you want it to be, since you can move the origin arrow in stock setup to the any corner of a rectangle or leave it to default in the center. Similar choices are available in the other shapes possible in the stock setup. Let's assume, for example, that you want your part origin to be near the left back corner at the top of the stock. Well, if you cut your stock out of an extrusion that came from the material rack, you probably have some rough faces... so you might define your stock to start to the left of X=0.0 by a quarter inch (left corner), you may want the stock to end slightly behind your intended part origin (back corner) and the top of the stock to be slightly above your top face (say .005 if the stock is beat up some). This allows you to face down to the top of the part and get a good clean face at z=0.0; it also allows your part to start 'inside' the stock in the X and Y so that you have nice clean part sides. You might draw your part in CAD to have the left side of the stock, back of the stock, and top of the stock (stock origin) X,Y,Z -.25, +.25. +.005 This allows the part origin to be at X=0, Y=0 and Z=0 and be in new metal... If you do this, it is easy to see if your stock length, width and depth are adequate to contain your part. What effect does it have on toolpathing? I think little except that since the MasterCam knows it is there, it can avoid collisions and make lead in/lead out paths that work. At least that is the theory... toolpaths mostly focus on the part origin. MasterCam did stop my tool on collision (in verify) when I tried to cut a cam from the wrong end of a simple crankshaft. The shaft stuck out on one side far enough to hit the tool holder, and it properly complained until I rotated the shaft 180 degrees to put the protruding shaft away from the tool. My only problem was it proceded to give me a new toolpath that involved a few more axes than I had... and that was a different topic. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words, but I don't yet know how to post a picture on the forum. I would have to read up on that... although I did see some .jpg's in there somewhere. Did I make it worse?

George, rest easy. MLC isn't the reseller. Jamie, Colin, et al... Thanks, there is a lot more help available than there appeared to be. I had the Ruby Slippers, I just didn't know what to do with them... I also turned off the A, B, and C rotations in Settings. Today went well until I got to my last OP. I can't blame anyone but myself, but I would have sworn that I did a tool probe on T8 when I put it into the rack. I had a surfacing post for a single speed handle for a vise from TVI , and I cut one for a hex smaller than the Kurt we did there. It would have been perfect... the graphics mode ran beautifully... but having a tool that was 3 times the diameter and a half inch longer than the machine thought it was made for an interesting lesson. I was holding the part in soft jaws, and the part was aluminum, so I have a new 'modern' design for a single speed handle for a small vise. The back is cut down to save weight (yup, that's it, intentional to save weight). Before long, I will have more commandments than Moses.... I. Thou shalt always run verify, on-machine graphics, and check the lowest Z value in the program before cutting to make sure you don't get surprised II. Thou shalt always check tools immediately before use, especially since the Renishaw Probe makes it so easy. III...

Wow! Like hitting the jackpot in Vegas! Three great responses. gcode- Thanks for the pointer to the Machine Definitions & the SolidWorks export tip. I drew the same (simple) part twice in SolidWorks and both times I imported it, I got the part I wanted to work on in the XZ plane. I wondered why it didn't shift on one of the two. This could open a whole new world of effective moves from SW to MC. DS - Thanks for the tip on the FTP site contents. I will run that down tonight. Colin - Yes, it was a 'Rotate WCS' 180 after rotating it the wrong 90... I actually had the Davis book "MasterCam Level 1 with Solids" in front of me at the time. The resulting image looked right and verified in the Generic Milling Machine Verify, so we posted it, but the Haas didn't like it at all when I did a graphics run on screen. Thanks for the fix. I actually cut the part. I had to draw it a fourth time but in MasterCam on the XY plane in order to get code I could run. With two of us with barely a year each under our belts with manual machines, we looked at each other after about six hours, grinned, and fired ourselves! (You have to keep a sense of humor). We spent little time on the CNC... most problems were with MasterCam issues getting the drawing oriented to give us useable code; much of that due to our inexperience with X2. Even though we both went through a semester of training on Mill 9.1 and understand what we WANT to do, trying to find the magic keystrokes to get us there has been a challenge. The internal help buttons in MC often tell you what to do, but NOT where to push the buttons to do it. With context sensitive menus, you could look a long time (and we did). At least SolidWorks gives you a button by button description of how to do the things you are researching in the help file. I guess it is always good to have something to hope for... like a new maintenance release where MasterCam has put some time and effort into those help files to bring them up to the SolidWorks level. Thanks again, all! Dan.

Today was filled with more frustrations... good thing we are not into manufacturing or we would go broke! While trying to change WCS orientation of a part imported from Solidworks, I did a 180 rotation so that my path didn't crash on a protruding 1.5 inch shaft coming out of a crankshaft cam for a small steam engine. Everything looked right, and verified. When I went to the CNC and did a graphics check, it told me that I didn't have an A axis. On investigating, it looks like the program decided to solve the pathing problem by just rotating 4th and 5th axes. Problem is that I only have three axes. I reflected on the generic machine post I have, and wonder if I shouldn't have one for a Haas Super Mini mill that precludes using solutions for which I don't have capability. So far, I haven't even been able to get simple MasterCam answers from my reseller who hasn't refused to answer, but always refers me to his software expert who is never there... and I can't usually wait a day or two so I look for a work around. Should I expect my reseller to provide a more specific post?

Today we tried to cut some simple pockets. It turned out not so simple. A co-worker had a program with a helix entry to a small pair of pockets. A 3/16 end mill should have handled the curves, but when we ran it we got a error in the graph mode of a Haas telling us that at one point the tool was too big. The offending line seemed to be a G03 line with X, Y positions and I and J entries. MasterCrash verify said it was fine... drew the cuts up spiffy. We couldn't figure out why the problem, so we went to a 1/8 cutter and reposted. Same thing but in a different place. This is Level 1 with Solids... anybody hazard a guess as to what we have run into? We used single step through the graphing mode and found the pocket was cut in multiple passes; the first pass worked fine, while the second hit this alarm TOOK TO BIG as I presume it crashed. MasterCam X2 did not show a problem and verify was fine.... ?????

I think they ought to make the letters assignable. Default to whatever you like or have now, but make them assignable so everybody can have his cake and eat it too. Actually that shouldn't be hard....

I got it. I knew our folks hadn't installed everything that was available, but I have a good number of various documents there. That will keep me busy for a while. Thanks for clarifying that.

Okay. I will contact our computer guys and find out what they did with the install disks and find the documentation file, but the InHouse Solutions books come highly recommended so I think I will get them anyway. I have no Mill 9.1 Library, since it was at the local TVI, but to be more specific, when I take a file and set it up to post say a facing operation, a contour, a couple of drill holes and a couple of pockets, any time I set up a tool and don't pick "Create New Tool", the program seems to change all my tools to the last one, even though I am done building the previous operations. For instance, I pick a 1/2 Inch Flat Endmill and build the data including depth of cut information for facing. Then later I pull a 1/2 Inch Flat Endmill for contouring. I set that up including depth of cut information. Suddenly my facing data is wrong... and I have had instances where I next define a pocket with a 3/16 Inch Flat Endmill, and the facing tool suddenly became a 3/16 Inch Flat Endmill with pocketing depth of cut. Maybe if I can get a Library set up I can preclude this. I will find the install disk and get it loaded so I can read it. Thanks.