A friend of mine is in the low-buck 5-axis business and has a half-dozen Hurco machines; his guys love them, and apparently they have decent accuracy. C

Create phony geometry with no groove in it. On another subject, try posting a resolution to the other topics guys (including me) have tried to help you with. C

Another option is to post the LAP cycle and then come back and use a finish toolpath to produce the undercut, but I think Jeff's way is most common C

As far as I know, you cannot reverse direction in a LAP cycle; maybe in "copy turning," but not "bar turning" (G85) . X must be consistently increasing, or decreasing. Plunge parameters should be "none"

QPM rocks! We use their Presto Port product to plumb our lathes with high pressure coolant. C

Assuming you're turning, it is Misc Ops - Stock Flip in older versions; not sure about the latest. As a caveat, this feature was buggy as hell years ago and we abandoned it; hopefully (for you) it is fixed now

Joe, the machine has a coolant tank the size of my lunchbox, so I don't know how much more volume we can run without an auxiliary tank. The bigger issue for us is that our lot sizes are small and cycle times are short; I don't want the guys dicking around with adjusting coolant lines for longer than the job runs, and I don't want to blow up tools because the guys didn't adjust the coolant. The Haas P-Cool works nice, so I figured I would finally choke up a few bucks and try an aftermarket version on one of the Okumas. C

I can respect that; they won't hear about anything from me. Thanks for your insight C

Thank you very much for your reply; I appreciate it a lot. Do you have the newer, slimmer version on any of your machines, or are yours the 'original' ( big ) units? I was worried about the size of the older units in the past, but the newer ones look significantly more compact. Truly, our Haas P-Cool unit (2004) is pretty freakin' big, yet rarely gets in the way, and the inside of the machine I am considering is huge around the headstock, so I am not hugely concerned about clearance with the structure. I understand the comments you make about deeper workpieces shielding the tool from the SpiderCool's stream, and we might keep a couple of Loc-Lines available, but most of our work is flat or shallow, so that isn't a huge concern for us. How has the mechanical reliability been? The user-friendliness to the operators? Last question, and I am not at all being a smarta$$, just curious: if they have been lackluster performers for you guys, why do you have a bunch of them? Thanks for your time on this C

ttt one more time

DNCMax for [10] years; bulletproof and simple

There are about 1,000 M Codes for air blast in OSP: 50/51 88/89 126/127 154/155 186/187

We run a ton of Capto and you can buy [3] CAT ER collet chucks for the same money as [1] Capto tool. If you have the room, build a bunch of dedicated CAT tools and call it a day. C

Thanks for the response, Henk. Yes, the SpiderCool adjusts with tool changes; you "teach" the system the correct position for every tool and use a DPRNT or PUT statement in your toolchange macro to tell the system what tool the machine has in the spindle. C

ttt Nobody running this? Any similar product? C

Mike, we have some CNMG turning holders that use the 100 degree corner for exactly the same reason C

For years, I have been enthralled with SpiderCool coolant nozzles, but we've never pulled the trigger on one. Are any of your guys running them? What are your thoughts about the system?

Thank you for taking the first step toward repairing my fragile self esteem

Jeff, that hurts me deep inside We used to regrind TNGA 331 inserts to TNGA 332 for years because we ran absolute sh!tloads of them; worked great because they were uncoated flat-top ceramics. In your application may not make sense. I have NEVER experienced a 'reconditioned' tool that worked as well as a new one, regardless of the manufacturer's claims. If you are pushing the tools to the edge, a reconditioned tool may be the recipe for disaster. C

I would recommend that, if your budget allows, you buy a Y; I have [2] Y-axis machines and [2] non-Y-axis machines, and the Y machines are SO much better to use for milling. I would also recommend that you buy a machine that allows you a minimum of [2] tools in the cut at all times; my single-turret subspindle machine has horrendous cycle times and you run out of room for tooling pretty quickly. C

We've been running Reverse Wear on our Okumas for 12 or 13 years because of this; not a big deal here because we just made it across-the-board ( OSP or not ) and train that way.

Just don't sweat it, Ron; this ain't the schoolyard C

That's how I remember things ran, just tripped over this one knucklehead twice in a week and started wondering what had happened. C

I have been absent for this forum for several years; are a$$holes like this "guitar" clown normal around here now?

We have folders for each machine / group of similar machines, and those are the only folders that the relevant machines can see. We have identifiers in the program name to help us understand what is what. 7361343AT51 has 7361343 (P/N) A (1st operation) T51 (Machine); 7361343BACT4 would be for the second operation, in the ACT-4. C