I'm working at being lean. Just ordered my second Makino A51nx HMC that will go along side the first.

Awesome Bob. Did you get a bigger tool magazine this time? You gonna put a 5th on this one too? Or keep it as a straight horizontal?

Joe the problem you can run into with longer probes is false triggers. When you go to probe you need to run slower with a long probe. The shorter the probe the faster you can do the probing process. The mass of the probe itself can interfere with probe hits. Why it is always best to calibrate your probe at the speeds you take your probe hits. Funny people will go by the recommended 5 imp when calibrating their probes then go off probing on a machine at 40 to 100 imp and say yes we are getting good results. Really? So you calibrated your probe at 100 ipm and checked your NIST traceable artifact in the machine at those speeds and got the same results at 5 imp with a very long probe? Not trying to say you are not seeing everything Joe, just making a general statement about things I have seen done over the years that can lead to getting wrong or misleading answers.

I'd have to go look, but I think our second touch is 2.4ipm.  You're right about those false triggers though. On some programs we have to put a 1 second dwell after the initial rapid move, or it'll trip the protected positioning.

I liken it to installing a 3" tip on a dial test indicator. If the original accuracy of the test indicator was .0001" with a 1/2" tip the accuracy just dropped to .0006" with a 3" tip...

I think it also depends on what probe you have. I remember sitting in on a Renishaw seminar years ago, where they explained the MP700 strain gage probe was created for just this reason. The gage length on all of our MP700s is right at 10 inches. 6 for the probe and 4 for the stylus, and we don't see any problems.

If you needed to take .0001 more out of the bore wouldn't it still have tool pressure built up and take too much out without backing off and resetting?

Yeah if you're trying to rework an existing bore by taking .0001 off, that's a whole other nightmare. I just mean making adjustments from part to part. The smaller Kaiser heads have a very small vernier, but it's very accurate as long as you can see it.

I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that you can bore the same size with the same head in two different materials, though.

 

^It didn't even occur to me that he might be asking this - but that's a good point. I assumed he meant different bores.

We use Kaiser heads, not sure of the model. They're about $1600 by the time you buy the CAT holder and the insert holder.  You CAN adjust .0001 reliably, but you need a steady hand and Go Go Gadget vision (or an Optivisor in my case).  If we were doing higher volume, I'd definitely look at the Kaiser, Romicron, or Walhaupter digital unit.

No problem. The difference between +.0002/-.0   and +.0003/-.0 is HUGE.  You'll spend a couple thousand bucks on the right cutting tools, but as long as you spend a couple thousand more on the right measuring tools, it shouldn't be too bad at all. As long as your bores aren't thin walled - you can actually get extremely good measuring results using the machine's probe. Obviously you'll still need post process measuring, but you'll find pretty quickly that the machine probe on either of those machines is deadly accurate, as long as it's calibrated properly.

If you do a fresh Optirough path on the same part, with all the exact same parameters, does it still do it? 

Basically on the "dynamic offset" page, the G54.2P1 values need to represent the incremental distance from the A/C center of rotation, to your actual part origin.  The Mazak applications guy should be able to help explain this to you. If he can't, ask him to put you in touch with one of the others who can.

We do it like this:

Set G54 to the machine's center of rotation.

Set G54.1P1 to your part's origin.

Add this macro call at the top of your program:

G10 L21 P1 X#70001-#5221 Y#70002-#5222 Z#70003-#5223

This will automatically fill in your G54.2P1 register with the difference between center of rotation and your part origin.

The code in your post should work fine after that. Although I'd recommend removing the A and C clamp/unclamp calls everywhere. The machine knows to clamp and unclamp on its own. You only need to command it to unclamp if you're going to be doing a rotary cut.

I tried that didn"t want to work.

It'll work. You just have to tinker around with the rotation plane settings.  I've done it on a bunch of parts and always forget how to get good output by the time I'm doing again.

With what I paid for a fully supported post I am going to have a tuff time getting approve to fly someone out to show me how to use it. I have a application engineer from Mazak in house today. He can explain how they work but not how to set it up in Mastercam.

I haven't seen the post, so I'm not sure how it works - but I'm assuming there's a Misc Integer that you'll turn on to activate G54.4, G54.2, G43.4, etc.  

If you're just doing 3+2 work, focus on getting G54.4 working for you. Don't worry about G43.4 unless you're doing rotary work, and G54.2 is just previous generation (less capable) G54.4, so don't worry about it either.

If you want to just do it quick and dirty, you need to put your Mastercam/WCS origin at the the machine's A and C axis center of rotation.  Then you can use one offset for all of your different orientations, and won't need G54.4 or G54.2.

If you want to do it right (which you should), you're going to need a little training in how to use G54.4. The post should support it.

Call this guy and have him come out for a day: http://www.dbssolutionsllc.com/services

If I remember correctly, Tim Johnson here on the forum uses them. Might want to try and track him down.  I'd like to know what they end up quoting you for the complete integration. It's the install that always jacks up the cost of stuff like this.

When I watched this video on their site:

(Turn sound up)

This is all I could think of

I wouldn't worry about the integral shank on an aluminum tool. Get yourself the 3 flute 1.5 inch AXD shell mill, on a decent arbor - and it'll be far more than your Haas can throw at it.

We have the 1.5" Walter aluminum tool with their twist on extension deal, as well as 1.5 AXD and BXD from Mitsubishi. The AXD and BXD seem to cut exactly the same, but the AXD has two screws per insert for piece of mind. Makes it twice as much work when changing inserts though, and the inserts cost more.

What's different between X4 and X8:

#1- Graphics

#2- Graphics

#3- Graphics

#4- Verify is now a separate window, and totally different from what you're used to

#5- Optirough paths. Like dynamic milling for 3D parts

#6- 2D dynamic paths are way more powerful/capable

#7- High Speed 3D paths with check surfaces instead of 9 million containment boundaries

#8- Tool Manager: An actual stand alone library manager that lets you build tool assemblies with adjustable tool stickout, and use them on all toolpaths.

Spend some time to read the entire "what's new" for X8. It'll still be missing a ton of stuff, since a bunch of stuff was new in X5, X6, and X7 - but you'll see a lot of xxxx you'll like.

I don't know about that particular model, but one my buddies has a bunch of YCM 40x20 machines. Seems like he adds another new one every year or so. He sings pretty high praise of them.

What the hell does running Mastercam have to do with true position on your machined parts???

They're friends in real life. He's just hassling him.

Joe, in McamX8 all the holder libraries are tool data bases now. 

Yeah, but the .holders file that was converted to .tooldb opens up 25.4 times larger than it should. You can't open the .holders file in the standalone tool manager, but you can open the .holders file in Mastercam, and they come out the correct size.

I sent this to my reseller last week and they (MLC-Cad) were sending it in as a bug to CNC Software. In order to get my holders brought in I had to manually change the values. Only doing what I need. I played with it a little and tried to bring in the library, I tried to drag and drop to create a new library, and I tried to migrate the library but when you open any of them the holders show as metric. If you deselect the metric box still nothing changes. So I created a new holder library and opened the old one and manually create a correct holder one at a time. Hopefully somebody has a solution

Turns out the migration utility made a copy of that holder library as a .tooldb - and that's the one with the giant tools.

When you're inside the toolpath tree on the holders branch,  hit "open library", and then change the file type to ".holders", there's a .holders file with the same name as the .tooldb file. THAT one opens the tools up the correct size.

So I was working on a new program today for one of our machines that had a decent tool library in X6 (holders are all exact, including spindle housing for that machine), and I opened that tool library for the first time in X8 - and the holders are wayyyyyyyyyy big. As far as I can tell - it converted the inch dimensions to metric, and then just turned the MM into inches.

So, an 8.66" diameter spindle housing, was converted to 219.96mm, but is now 219.96 inches. 

I've already made new holders for most of the other machines over the last few months in X8, so it's not the end of the world, but it would be handy if I could use these few as they're supposed to be. I'm sure it's a simple toggle somewhere?

Did you make sure it actually saved as .eia? Sometimes it'll look like you saved it as .eia, but it's really ".eia.nc", because the .nc is hidden.

Also, to load via USB or Ethernet, your file name has to be the program number.

1234.eia

You also can't have any leading zeros. For example, 52.eia, not 0052.eia

The very first line of your file should be:

O1234(KWOODYS PROGRAM)

No percent signs or anything like that.

Chris, is there any reason you can't just install a slightly larger coolant pump? I realize this can cause other problems on some machines with smaller coolant tanks, but maybe just 20-30% more coolant volume/pressure would be enough that you're not adjusting loc lines?

I think there are some situations where dynamic and opti paths work awesome in aluminum with the big DOC and small axial cut, and I use them both pretty frequently - but if you've got a medium sized part with a lot of bulk to come off - a 2 inch Mitsubishi AXD cutter using an optirough path with a large stepover, and small step down,  will move a lot more material a lot faster than an endmill.

I think X8 is awesome, but you know it's inevitable....

Cimco DNC-Max with no issues here.

Rob, do you guys use Cimco DNC-Max on your Matrix controlled machines with ethernet?

WATCH THE RETRACT!

We run some 1x8 solid carbide endmills on CAT40 machines that are 6 inches down in a pocket. You definitely quadruple check the backplot to make sure there's no shank contact anywhere.