If it's for aluminum, you might do well with a solid carbide endmill. Destiny, and Swiftcarb come to mind as folks who could make you a 1x13 pretty quickly. One of my customers uses Swiftcarb solid carbide, 1.25 x 14 OAL solid carbide on some semiconductor chambers.

Dave you can get all that same stuff using just 1 WCS. You just use TPlanes, and when you create the TPlane, you tic the "Set New Origin" box. Although, that basically creates a WCS anyways, since it shows up in the view manager. The stock MPMaster post generates the B axis moves based on the angle between the WCS and the Tplane. Our horizontal programs have all the same WCS, and whatever number of TPlanes it takes to get the job done.

Even better: Tie the "named views" button to a button on your space pilot, and change the "Top" button on the SpacePilot to "Gview=Tplane"

^ I can tell it's a Mori, but what model?

This is what I'm not quite understanding. Maybe my post behaves differently? We have programs that run 15 parts on a face. I set my clearance and retract at .1 The tool comes in to .1, works on the first part, goes back up to .1, moves to the next part, through all the parts. Then it goes home in Z, indexes the B axis, and starts on the next side. The Z home move is triggered in the post by the B move. I can't really picture needing to do anything different than that? I must have different types of parts than Bob, because I can't even recall the last time I would have wanted to move from part to part without lifting high enough to clear the part? That's why I was thinking a screen shot would help.

Where's Guitar when you need him?

I wonder how many superalloy fan casing it takes to pay off that entire machine. Probably not many.

Are you cutting along the side of the parts or something? You can leave the clearance box unchecked, set your feed plane to a negative number, etc. How large are these retracts and plunges you're getting?

I must be missing something. Bob, can you post a screenshot of the kind of retract/approach moves you're trying to get/remove?

^This. I was going to say there are certain type of inserts and certain circumstances where regrinding actually works, but rob beat me to it. And yes, the "engineer" is high if he thinks it's going to be cost effective (or possible) to return a regular DNMG lathe insert back to manufacturers spec. If you guys are a normal shop using normals types of tooling - this engineer's "cost saving" idea could take a few wrong turns and end up being the most expensive tooling decision in your shop's history.

That's a dream part for any B axis multitasking center. (Integrex, NT, Multus, etc). Turn the smooth end on the main spindle, hand it off of the sub spindle, do all the milling - part is done. You're looking at a price range of $400k to infinity for a new B axis machine though.

Probably hard to pick this up on youtube - but if you've programmed thousands of parts in dozens of different materials - the first thing that jumps out when you see 106rpm on a 3/8-16, is that the SFM is too slow for most materials, and the pitch is off on his feedrate. Not to mention, he said it depends on the material. Easy to see why you'd be so easily confused though. I'll see if I can find something on youtube for you.

:rant: :rant: :rant:

????????

I bet if you check your tool, you'll find the tap has moved in the holder quite a bit as well. Your pitch is off .0025 per revolution on a 12 revolution deep hole. .030 by the time you get to the bottom.

Typically a post like this would be laughed off as over the top satire - but having seen the delusional ramblings in some of your other posts - I can actually believe you're serious.

LMAO! This might be the most "enlightening" post I've ever seen in the main forum. It's always fun to see how other people think. Who knew you could learn complex 5 axis milling on youtube? I can see why you're of the opinion that garbage men make more than machinists. On this board? Um, no. You might have better luck at CNCZone though.

Dave, if it's a regular font - unfortunately the easiest way is to just add a dummy into your assembly, extrude the text into it, then import that solid into Mastercam. If it's a stick font that you can't extrude - create a drawing in SW (blueprint). Make the scale 1:1 - and save it as a DXF. Merge the DXF into your mastercam file, and then shuffle it around till it's in the right place. Either way it's a PITA, but both of these work well when you've got a customer part that has a bunch of bullxxxx stick writing you don't want to redraw in MC. I've only had to do this a few times over the years so I just went with what I knew would work. Hopefully somebody else here has the magic combination for letting sketches transfer over from SW to MC.

These what you're looking for? http://www.uline.com/BL_1907/Egg-Filler-Flats

I was looking at that picture thinking, "Wow, Daniel's new shop looks like a tradeshow." Then I realized it was a picture that I took at a Mori open house a few years ago.

That doesn't sound too bad. How much water do you reckon you go through?

The problem isn't the Z axis height - so much as the distance between the platter top and the A axis center of rotation. So one machine is at .125, and another is at .130. When you move a program to the other machine, your Y axis is off .005 at A-90. Kevin, now that Haas is offering G54.2 and TCP on their newest 5 axis machine, have you checked to see if they can upgrade existing machines with those options?

Did you find any estimates of cartridge life on that Grainger unit? The similar looking units I was shopping would only make 300 gallons of DI water before the resin needed replacing, at $90!

That's a really good video. Let us know what you find on the DI systems. There was a topic about this on Practical Machinist last week, and some of the guys were paying astronomical $/gal on the DI water. We go through wayyy to much water/coolant here to spend 30 cents a gallon on water. After seeing what a few months of tap water did to our $3000 Porta Cool, I kinda want to start feeding our $300,000 machines something a little better, as long as it's cost effective. They did mess up one thing though. DON'T mark the position on your coolant mixer for the "perfect" concentration. This changes almost every time you use the mixer, depending on temperature of the water coming out of the hose, and concentrate in the barrel. The concentration can be off as much as 10% from one day to the next. It needs to be checked with the refractometer every time you start to fill.

I love watching MTB employee wizzing contests.