You can do the job, most of the time. I don't think MCX is the BEST tool, but you can do a lot. If you are doing anything other than open and shut and have contoured parting lines, Moldplus is worth every penny. The struggle sometimes with MCX is once you get it designed if you are in a shop that uses full prints to build with, you will most likely need to use another tool to make those prints. There are many products out there but if MCX is what you have to work with then they must have been getting along with it so far.

It would seem you have a setup problem on the machine. I don't know what you would use on this particular machine to check your homes to be sure the offsets are correct, but that is where I would start. If the centers of your rotations are not dialed in you will struggle forever.

Some details are needed. I assume you mean 5" tall (thick) and what size is slug? Are you doing anything now to control it?

Vericut has a Mastercam Interface that would be required for this.

They do a decent job of popping a hole and then interpolating to finish size in a right angle head. Been using MA Ford brand but several brands are pretty good.

I have a new situation with the Moldplus Catia Translator. I have a Catia Product file that is calling both a CATPart file and a Model file in the assembly. When I initiate the translator the dialog comes up like normal showing both the CATPart and Model files, I hit OK and it bombs. Not a crash bomb but instantly says it is done and I get nothing, empty file. Anyone ever translated a Product file with both CATPart and Model files in it? Is there a way around it or a fix of some type? TIA

We used to lock right angle drill ops before post updates that automate the process. Problem was, as mentioned above if someone tried to mass edit something the lock was worthless.

I think it IS an issue. Yes there are always changes to deal with. This one in particular irritates me because I would agree that all the Windows applications I can think of up through 7 flow like the previous versions of Mastercam. I won't lose any sleep over it but I definitely understand the man's frustration. Irritating. That being said I live by "save early save often" and I never allow Mastercam, or any application to save a file on exit. My opinion is that the practice is dangerous, so I don't do it.

Yes, 80 proof coolant, and lots of it.

Never had any holding problems, but only used in 40 taper machines. I would think it is relative. If you want two 1/2-13's to hold against 110hp you might have trouble. With the proper number of fasteners I wouldn't be scared. I guess if you said "I would use four toe clamps" to hold that part, if you used as many invert-a-bolts good to go.

Copy that red leader! I always tell people "you don't have to do it the way I am, and I can show you other ways, but I do what I do because it works and I am used to it" I see both sides of the "move" issue. Remember you are ALWAYS moving something. If you don't move the part you move the tooling, and if you don't move the tooling you move the part. In a mold setting I liked to leave it all as is. As mentioned above if there is a change it is all in the right place. Doing production work and moving the part doesn't bother me at all. I don't see the need to leave more than one part in a file, and with the WCS (did a lot of work before it came around) it is easy to "re-move" the part if needed.

Pin what the heck are you drilling 4' deep? And how many beers does that take?

OK Maybe I am not getting it, but it seems to me that the solution is fix the problem. We have four machines tied to a 63 pallet system and we don't comp anything. We use a G10 line for offsets when needed, but the end goal is that they are all the exact same. All four machines have the exact same library and all parts can run on any machine with a couple exceptions due to one of the machines being a little older. I guess if we were running one-offs maybe I would work on a comp system, but we haven't needed to do it. We do have dedicated fixtures and pallets which have all been verified so maybe that is the difference. We will manage the new cell system differently that is being installed in January because it will be a different statement of work, so maybe I will be back here putting together a comp system. If you have time please post a follow up on how things are going after some time passes.

^^^^^^ We were a little apprehensive first time out with interpolating holes with these heads. Of course the sales staff says "no problem" but in real life it doesn't always work out that way. In this case it was good with a little playing with S&F once set up. We have done holes with drills hundreds, thousands of times. Milling was fine once we had all feed and DOC figured out. The "M1" head is the way to go.

We had some issues with this and have minimized the problem with two items. One is be certain you are waiting long enough for the file to save completely as X7 has inordinate save times relative to file size. Two is do not use the "file has changed" warning to save your files. Save the file as you want it, being certain it is what you want, and do not use the "yes" when asked if you want to save the file before exiting because MCX says it has changed. Additionally if you do as suggested above, using the icon in toolbar not through the "file" pull down, the icon shows "depressed" until MCX is done saving the file.

Lots of variables there to account for. Top guess (assuming as newbeee said that no one changed anything) would be a modal that wasn't canceled between first and second part. A modal plane change for example that wasn't canceled because there isn't an appropriate safety line spit out by the post. Just a guess but if you share the code it would be easier to see what is happening.

Having a tool library is definitely critical. It has to also be a "good" library, meaning well defined including holders. Our approach has been to leave a range open for tools that come in and out with the job, as specials. The library itself is never supposed to change, unless due to an advancement in new cutting tool or similar thing. I will say that as long as you are dealing with humans, they need to pay attention. One guy who "thought" he knew what he was doing can hose you by changing something, then if the next guy looks at the tool list and says "library tool, I don't need to check that one". Then wrong tool comes in and crashes. You can say it should never happen, but again when you are dealing with humans, it does.

Since you were already questioning the tool changer aspect I shouldn't need to say it, but the care and attention as described above will be critical. We did some testing in Makino a61's because we were having orientation problems with an El-Tool RA drill. The tool changer using factory tolerances doesn't repeat all that well in orientation. The taper and retention force on your machines shouldn't be an issue when well cared for. To correct our problem we inserted the primary notch that mates with the drive dog and made the tolerance .0015" clearance so that when you put a 1" drill in the RA head it will repeat within ~.001. Like Doug said we have switched quite a few bored holes over to the high dollar reamers in the last couple years with great success. Lead time is usually the killer and we have had jobs that we did what we had to for the first run because while the reamers worked great i couldn't get them in today's insane lead times.

I have been out of mold work for a while, but I know folks who say they are doing well with the magnetic systems. The first concern of mine was chips hanging on but they say it isn't a problem. The setup is quick and flatness concerns are all but gone. Search magnetic workholding as there are several out there.

I haven't used this much lately, but in the past I always had to either say my 1" cutter was 1-1/8" or use a larger overlap because I saw the same results you are seeing.

I am probably one of the people G has heard good things from on Sager. When I bought mine I also got the "zero dead pixel" warranty because on a laptop that is pretty critical. I would buy another. I think BOXX was working a deal with CNC Software, or the resellers as being the "go-to" setup. Whether it holds any weight I don't know, but I have always tried to buy one step older technology than the cutting edge most expensive items. It still is way more cost than what older stuff would be, but there always seems to be an exponential jump when you get to the very latest and fastest.

Same thing here, I call it a bug. We also can repeat. At first we thought we did something wrong, but not so.

Been a while and the 4203 doesn't ring a bell, but my experience was very low dust, chips evacuated well with average collector and pretty much standard solid carbide held up well. I don't know what size parts you are looking at, but at the cost of the stuff hopefully you aren't removing a great deal of material. Made parts from rods ~4"Ø and the net shape was about 40% removal from rough stock. I have heard some folks go to diamond coating but it would have to be really intense work for that in my opinion. Of course our work was low volume too.

^^^^^ I absolutely get what you are saying. Our situation is similar and per my previous post the toughest part is getting the machine to put the ":" in the name for where they are looking. The colon required causes the most trouble, for us anyway. So we are looking at renaming files or whatever we need to do so it works.

^^^^ Sure the above. Back to real business, yes you need to answer or address Ron's questions. Many variables but in a shoot from the hip manner I will tell you if I had the ability to do it "in house" and not have to send it to a sinker I would do that. I have finished hard steel in a Fadal that was in need of a tune up and still got the job done. Would you want to do that in a production scenario? No but that is the point of you asking the question. If you have enough draft from your draw angle I would really look at OSG and others who offer "profile" tools that would be for instance a 1/4" ball but have a 3/8" shank with a taper. That principle is available from several manufacturers. So the "pushing off" is relative to how you have roughed it. Don't try to send in a 1/4" ball to finish after a 3/4" bull W/.125R has been the smallest tool in there. There have been times in the past when I have roughed with a 3/8"Ø tool even though I would finish with a 1/2" tool so I didn't bury the finish tool. If you need more please provide more details of the job. Thanks.