I appreciate all the feed back. Our molds are water cooled and monitored for control. I am not sure exactly what our temperatures are. But will request that information be provied to me for review. Typically our process is much more repeatable in production mode. The parts provided here were from our prototype run. (less than a two hour run). So it was difficult to run consistant. I do feel that we will be repeatable +/- .060 when we run again for production. (our machines are in the rear of the shop, away from any drafts) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In regards to the negative "C" axis. We stumbled onto that problem. And our post has since been adjusted to accomodate that value. That is part of our headache, the lack of a "proven" out post for the Quintax machine. We are certainly learning as we try to move ahead with programming. Fortunatly our MasterCAM dealer has been by our side assiting with all these issues. Or would be lost in the dark. ~~~~~~~~~~ I think the scale feature is something I may want to look into. I see a few potential uses for that type of function. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We are hoping to see some parts that fit our check fixture this week. Then we are moving onto another part number for programming. I am sure there will be issues there.

Our parts are HMWPE (apprx. 28" x 58" formed LH & RH), .030" is like impossible. When we open our "bay" door our parts change by .030". haha We do "rough" trim the parts, seperating LH & RH for trimming. What material and size are you thermoforming to hold a tolerance of .030" or less? ~~~~~~~~ Our vacuum seal is near the perimeter of the part to resist any cutter "chatter". The seal is just a few millimeters from the trim line, which allows the entire "interior" surface to be held by vacuum. When trimming is completed, the flashing falls off. ~~~~~~~~~ We are forming new parts, and more closely measuring our repeatability. I am not sure what tolernaces we will acheive, but it should be better than the proto's ran that were .06 - .125 different. ~~~~~~~~~ Today we made better progress, but ran into a wall. The Quintax Router will not rotate past -10 degress in the C axis. Before we adjust the post to compensate for this axsis limit. We need to find a solution from Quintax on how to correct this limit. (if possible)

Our machine does support 3D tool compensation. ~~~~~~~~~~~ We are adjusting our forming process to ensure we have repeatable parts. In our start-up we had parts that varied by .06" - .125" in over all size. (we are trimming wheel liners) It appears that our fixture has the difficult task of holding the parts that are slightly different. With the overall complex geometry involved, it is diffucult to hold the varying parts. Which in turn affects trimming and the problem is appearant when placing on the check fixture. The trim fixtures are holding our parts with about 20-23 inHg, and the perimeter is held well. So I am confident we are not facing issues there.

We received our Quintax Router a number of weeks ago and have yet to trim a "good" part. We had to address some machine issues, (painful) fixture issues, and post processer issues. With all those issues behind us, we are now focusing on the CAM software. Our MasterCAM rep's have offered great support in the editing of our post. But we are still having some issues. By late this week we should be successfully trimming parts, fully programmed by MasterCAM. The post we have obtained is from CNC Software with some minor revisions to suit our application. For the group trimming plastic, how do you compensate your cutter path for changes in part size (different shrink)? Those minor adjustments are very difficult.