Is there a way to keep X8 from selecting entities that are not visible? I seems on very complex solids and surfaces with lots of wireframe I am constantly getting an entity to highlight and substantially slows the selection process. Any ideas?

That'll wear a whole different patch of paint off your atc door.

OK. Thanks.

Link doesn't work. Do you have another?

I am getting a tool geometry difference between backplot and verify in X8. The tool from backplot with the tapered shank is correct and the one in verify with the squared off shoulder is incorrect. Is there a way to fix this or a work around? Thanks, TK

No nitrogen counterbalance for me.

I've seen on the Hass machine build-up that they have an early power failure detect function. I'm not sure how it works though. I recall some similar function on a Mori NH from 07 that I ran. Don't remember having used it to see how well it functioned. I know of a very large high-end shop locally that installed some sort of battery backup system for some large Makinos they have. I'm trying to get some more info on it. I'm sure it's well beyond what I could afford. I didn't even think about the insurance thing. That is why you have insurance isn't it.

How does everyone deal with power outages? I have 3 verticals and when the power surges or fails for even a split second the Z axis drops 30-40 thou. How do you deal with this issue? It seems there are some pretty high end parts being machined by folks here and I can't imagine not having a way to deal with this. Thanks.

Figured it out... I had my shank diameter smaller than the cutting diameter which is how it is in real life. Had to make the shank and cutting diameter the same. Any ideas why this happens? Can anyone reproduce this?

I am trying to add a tool created in the X8 tool manager to an assembly. When I try to drag the tool from the tool window down into the assembly tree it won't accept the tool as part of the assembly. There are a few other tools that I can drag down into the assembly but not one in particular. Any thoughts? TK

The large wiper flat concerns me. It seems on a finicky thin part it would put stress back into the part and cause more warping issues. What you think?

Is there a way to leave the plane manager open in X8 with a dual monitor setup? The level manager works as I'd like but not the plane manager.

I'll have to give fly cutting a shot... Never really considered it.

I am wondering if taking it all in one pass would be better with the part being titanium. It seems the light depth of cut is almost rubbing the part to death. Anyone seen similar results?

What types of face mills or inserted cutters put the least amount of stress back into a part. I have a 2" x 20" long piece of titanium that has a very thin cross section. We are currently using a 2.5" 45 deg lead face mill to face the 2 x 20 surface in one pass. The part seems to want to curl like a pringle or twist after we take a finish pass on the face. The back side of the part, facing down, is hollowed out significantly and the face we are taking material off of is very thin. Any particular style of tool or brand?

What did you use to go in your end support? A bearing or just a shaft of some kind?

We sound like a similar environment to you. What we're working on is creating a master tool library of the most commonly used tools. These will be given a MT, master tool, number in the description inside Mastercam's tool database. Such as MT100 1/4 Spot Drill 120 Deg 1100EXT. This tool is then always left assembled. There can also be duplicates of it setup. When they're not in the machine they get stored on a rack and left until they're ready to be used again. When they get brought into the active file the tool and offset number are changed to correlate to which pocket they will be in the machine as we can't run tool numbers above 99 in our machines. I purchased some shelving 60 x 24 x 60 from Uline with 4 shelves and had Mic6 tooling plate waterjet cut. Each shelf holds 90 tools. The front of the shelf will be labeled MT100-102 etc. I have an excel spreadsheet that has which holder, collet, cutting tool, projection etc that tells us how to set them up. This will eventually be put inside the Mastercam database and our Zoller presetter. Each MT will be labeled with a polyester label from Dymo. Just bought their Dymo Rhino 4200 hand held label maker. I'm using 3/8 wide labels that can go on the 1.75 dia of CAT40 holders. We'll see how they hold up.

Saw this in a Seco video a couple years ago... I think. Great idea. I've not used it having a couple lathes but when you need to do with what you have you tend to get creative.

YES Please.

I would HIGHLY recommend going Bob! It's what opened my eyes to what CNC was all about in 2006 when I was fortunate enough to go for the first time. I'll be attending Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I'm also bringing the two guys that for with me. They've never been before. It should be a good experience for my company.

Thanks.

In all honesty that's the way I taught myself when i first started programming and it always worked/works. I didn't know resources like eMastercam existed way back when to learn any differently. I have found at times when needing to use things like project it can be easier to work with just the Top WCS and T/C planes where i need them. I have tried using WCS at times now that i know more about it and it seems like I have to constantly create extra planes to do things that would be more simple with my original method. Maybe as i get further into having all my fixturing drawn and trying to output G10 to set up the machine it's time to go the WCS route for a new setup on the VMC. Food for thought for sure.

Hmmm. Definitely some food for thought on the last few posts. Thanks. I really like the QuickMasks button Colin. Most of our parts are 4+ operations. Most done on a VMC in multiple setups for now. Cough cough.. Hopefully a 5 axis soon... Some are done on our rotary table. We are investing in some Lang vises and using their zero point on the regular table for one op and then slap the vise on the rotary table zero point for the other 4 sides of a cube and back to a kurt vise for the last face cut. All the programs are in the same file. If I'm doing the whole part on a 3 axis machine I never change my WCS just tool and construction planes. If it's being done on the rotary I'll create a new WCS for the rotary op and then planes around it for the rotations. A lot of high mix very low volume work.

Think i got it. I had to go down the the Attributes tab at the bottom of the main GUI and turn off the EA Manager in the window that pops up when you click on Attributes.

Now when i create new wireframe inside the file I just opened the new entity won't obey my current color selection. How do I change this?