I have been doin this since I graduated highschool in 1996. Over the last 7 yrs - I was at the the 1st shop for 3 months, 2nd 1 yr, 3rd 4 yrs, and the one I'm at now 2 yrs. Mold, production, and aerospace are the types of machining I have to deal with.

How could I become a Beta tester for mastercam? I have been using mastercam for the last 7 years and have enjoyes watching it change and become a well rounded cad/cam system. I beleive our shop would be a perfect canidate. We have 3 seats of mill level 3 with solids. we have alot of machine variety, water-jet,laser,lathes,lathes with live tooing, typical 5axis machines, one nutating head machine, horizontals, ragular 3 axis machines, we pretty much have it all covered here and want mastercam to support it all.

I have been in your situation many time with that type of cut - Last time I had to go 3.250" deep and hold +/-.002 on some lugs on the middle of the wall - I personally like Imco carbide endmills - .500" dia 1.5" loc - with a stick out of 3.300" - F20 ipm and rpm of 1250 at .200" depth of cut - It hasn't failed me yet

Just wanted to say hello to all, I been a member for a while. I float in and out on here checking out all of the interesting comments and and tips, I haven't really ran into any major problems yet in mastercam, but when I do I'll definately post it on here. I program 3,4 & starting on 5 axis here where i work. I have been using mastercam since 95. I work for a company called PROFAB in oklahomacity (www.profab.com). I do recommend to everyone who has to do there own posts to get the V9 MP post processor cd - It covers everything. We have just about every type of machine here and I'm stuck with doin most of the post work and its a big help.