Settings, configuration, post dialog default. Put a check in both overwrite boxes. Save your settings when asked as you exit. My bad, I did not see that SteveO got it.

"you couldnt have been more right. it seems the machine is getting the height and cutter offsets from the same value." Glad to hear that worked out. If indeed this is the case, do not change the H value. Force your post to output a new D value instead. Keith A-1 stated "You can do that right in Mcam, select all operations, right click, edit selected ops, renumber tools, then put whatever you want in the field for "length offset value to be added to tool number". Good tip. This is how I post for our Makino, H1, D30. Best solution here is to call the folks who did the upgrade and ask. A parameter usually controls the incremental value such as offset 1 for h1 and offset 30 for tool 1 dia. comp. Could be offset value 20 or 40 depending on how its set, usually in increments of 10 though. Try posting code out with lets say h1, using offset 1 for hiegth, and D30, using offset 30 for tool comp and see what happens. Try 20 or 40 if 30 does not work. You should have received a new manual with the upgrades, that would describe this function and point you to the parameter settings. Regardless of the fix, always be care full when setting tool comps in this fashion. You probably have a 50/50 chance of scraping the part when it it picks up the wrong comp. It happens that fast as well. Looks strange when it misses the part by a mile, sucks really bad when it enters the part and keeps going. I did this when hard milling some pockets at 90. IPM and as luck would have it , the dam tool did not break and left one hell of a groove in the face. There's a c-hook for renaming machine def's that may help set you up just for theses machines once your tweaked.

"but the machines graphics show me about an 18 inch radius for the lead in/out " By any chance, do you have a tool length offset stored at this value? I've no Hurco experience but it looks as if the controller at the machine is reading both the H and D values from the same location. " i just had them all updated to the isnc option." Could be the updates require you to use a CC value thats somewhere in the upper end of the register. Tool 1, H1, D30, or something like that.

Not sure about X5 but in previous versions: Place a point where you want the cutter to exit and select that as the last entity when chaining your geometry. Turn on "use entry and exit point" then play with the lead out settings. This method works good in tight situations.

FYI, I selected the entire model, not individual faces. Containment boundaries, drive chains, and depth limits determine the areas to be machined in this case.

Double posted. Can a mod remove the second post?

The hat in the pic is the boss, SF Blend, along 3d spiral, light blue chains. The main tube is SF Blend, across, dark blue chains. The ends machined with SF Contour with shallow enabled to add cuts and a 2" gap setting using the green chains as a containment.

Billy club? For the finishing, I'd try SF Blend or Parallel running in line with the curves, staying off the end walls by a few. SF contour or waterline on the end walls. Use depth limits and or a containment boundary to try and keep the tool from rolling over the edges. Another option is to extend the top face by a few thou in the vertical and use depth limits. If possible, change your finisher to a larger tool, say 5/32 or 3/16. When I get some time, I'll try and mimic the drawing and show you how to set up the SF Blend.

Sounds like tools are not the problem here. Tool path selection is. Post a picture.

NP, give it a try. It should look something this. Play with the fillet if you need to get closer in size. I just guessed at it.

I took a look. High feed mill, it's a rougher so don't be to concerned about having a pristine tool path. 1st off, the geometry on the back of the part with the rad. You have a vertical wall and a angled wall in the same path and the cutter wants to cut to tangency so it's going to try and cut the angled wall before it starts to cut on the vertical. Extend all of those surfaces up above the part by .09 (cutter rad) and use your depth limits to control where it starts in Z. SF contour worked here using the arc/line lead in and a containment boundary, to not feed in on the part in Z. Those corner rads. Maybe it's just me but it looks like they balloon in towards the part. I remade the surfaces as described with sharp corners and a flat bottom as well, then turned them into a solid, .715 fillet in the corner, remove solid face to get rid of the floor. Worked good and the tool stayed completely down, one way cutting, through out the entire path, not once did it violate the part boundary on the entrance. The other 3 faces are wide open so SF parallel or flowline will work even better but they wont turn the corners. That tool can handle the width of cut at the top so no need to use multiple passes or a roughing routine. Put your clamps in the right location and SF contour will go around that corner and do the ends as well. 3 tool paths to rough should do it.

"How do I stop it from plunging into the part?" I have not looked at the file but I usually use one of 3 methods. The direction feature is my first choice as it gives me the most control, extended surfaces and when I'm lazy, tangential line length in the gap options.

"without proofing them first?" What do you mean proofing them? Reading all the code?" Vericut? Back plot and verify. Single block up to the H call out and let it fly. I very rarely look at the code anymore. The few things I do look at are coolant commands, manual entries, H, D, and T call outs, all prior to saving and sending to the machine. Thats it.

I don't think so. The message, checks are treated as drives appears. Could be wrong though.

" The shrink systems I've seen take several minutes to heat up enough to release the tool which is lost time." The Haimer system we use is usually under 10 seconds, much faster with the small dia. tooling. The cooling takes some time though. I usually set up my tools and turn the chiller on ahead of time. The thing that heat shrink tooling does well is give you very narrow and long necks on the holder that will go where the others won't.

Check surfaces in the High speed tool paths?

"G5P10000 is HPCC on, G5P0 is off. There is no seting for P, it's 10000 or 0." That's how our Makino S56 is set up. The manuals also speak of M codes that give you options for high accuracy, high speed and something in between, although I have not messed with those yet. There's yet another setting on the custom page for high accuracy, I turn it on, start the prog and it shuts off. Obviously we don't have a handle on that yet. As far as the code output, I've found that if I set the filter to on, with a tolerance of .00005 to .0001, I get very few arcs in the code, but the machine actually hits the programmed feed, if I set it up with a looser tolerance and mostly arcs, it can stumble some. I'm thinking the shape of the surfaces and the tool size plays in here as well. Ditto what Joe says. Here's a link to a video on filter settings and smoothing that discuss when and where and how to apply them. This may help some. The video is called HSTWebinar. http://www.emasterca...=1

Thanks for the reply. Most of those look like video shorts not necessarily on the DVD. Can you look into this further?

Be very care full with the healing features. They can take liberties with gaps and voids and produce unwanted results that can be hard to spot. Sometimes it will rebuild tangent surfaces that were fine except for an adjacent gap and the end results can go out of tolerance. I always overlay the original with the healed model and do a quick visual of both the surfaces and the curves in MC.

Try asking this guy if he can help you out. http://www.driskillguitars.com

Liberal use of air blasting. I've rigged up a mag base in the past with good results.

Anybody know where this can be downloaded from? Has anybody seen it? Any comments? http://www.iscar.com/Catalogs/Catalogs.asp/CountryID/17/MenuItemID2/580/CatalogID/765

Dave, HLE?

"I am unable to send a screenshot due to confidentiality agreements." Trim the surface to a plane, take a screen shot and crop the picture, post the pic, and you haven't broken the agreement. We won't tell. It's very easy to make up a extremely close representation of what your trying to accomplish without breaking any confidentiality agreements. Trust me, lol, the parallel tool path isn't that confidential. Anyway, pick your start point at the other end of the surfaces, you have four corners to work with, and play with the 0, 90, 180, 270 settings.

No. I have a Quadro in one system that works fine. Tried an ATI firegl and it worked fine as well. The graphics on the system I where I discovered the SW bug was also a Quadro. So I decided not to pursue the MC side of the issue as It works fine out of the Box.