Thanks Gcode

Anybody else seeing all these other errors on startup ?

+1 , they are great for multi axis work where you can tilt your tool over and pick away areas of a mold and therefore don't need a fancy toolpath

Spot on Rotary Ninja, this is how we always do it. But I add one extra step of saving the profile at full size as a dxf first to be used for custom tool generation in vericut, then scale it back to 1.000 and save as a mastercam file.

You could try using the - transform toolpath , setting it to transform by toolplane. This way you just create a generic pocketing toolpath at your datum top view , and then transform it to the different planes with a toolplane and datum shift - this is assuming the same geometery at each pocket though.

In a word "no", the interface does a better job of handling the transfer with the latest version, but it is still not 100%. if you have any tricky close proximity work double check the holder/tool geometry after import.

Glenn , you say it wasn't very successful, isn't this what machining with ceramics is supposed to look like - all hot and glowy !!

we looked into machining some similar stuff a while back and got costings for a 3mm OSG CBN endmill to do the job - $900 each !!! that poo pooed the job straight away

You could try looking up a company called Accutex, they are a taiwanese machine that is very well built and will compete with any of the high end machines for roughly half the price. They have one of the best auto threading systems - I believe it may be a refined copy of a Fanuc system as I heard that the company was started by some ex fanuc employees.

Yes is Heidenhain iTNC530 control - should have mentioned Unfortunately M6 doesn't work on our machine and M2 is the same function as M30 - although the vauge manual does mention that this is dependant on parameter 7300 - which when i look it up is set to 7, and the german description is talking about q-parameters so reluctant to alter this at this stage. Our post also uses M2 at the end of the program so would have to change that to M30 if we managed to get M2 to fuction as a stop without program reset, not a biggie though. Wish our control had the MFUN.HLP file it would be a great deal of help as the machine manual supplied by DMG is useless. The Heidenhain iTNC530 one is good but does not help with machine builder specific stuff. Will contact my dealer and see what answers I get there. Still waiting on an answer to another question i asked 2 months ago so won't hold my breath !

thanks for pointing me to that thread. looks like i might have to look into the parameters list Yes ours unlocks at end of cycle too, but want to get it to unlock following a M0.

Does anyone know if there is an M code to unlock the doors on a DMG DMU 60 monoblock ? thanks

Just be aware of your tolerance settings though as the Dynamic toolpathes take longer to process.

No problem for us, I can copy a drill cycle and just select a tap from my tool library and it automatically changes the cut type to tapping . X6 MU2

Our DMG post has a question at posting that asks you what offset/datum preset you want to use that then over rides all offset outputs. Not good if you want to use more than one offset in your program but awsome for 5 axis work with mulitple tool planes.

Hey Mike Have you changed it in the configuration file too ? This would be a permanent change though rather than attached to each machine def as it looks like you are trying to achieve ? Mark

Yes correct in essence, But it may depend on your post. Our Haas posts won't allow a different WCS other than top when doing 4th axis work as it will alarm out as a double rotation. But our 5axis DMG post would handle this fine due to it being true 5 axis. I guess your horizontal post could be set up very similar to our 4th axis vertical post being that a horizontal is just a vertical on it's side. Therefore you might have to move your part. Best to just try posting out an op with the wcs set to front and the t/c planes set to something else like left or right and see if it gives you the right code or alarms out.

You should be fine using the WCS, just make sure you have your planes set correctly in the toolpaths so you get the rotations you need when posted.

and make sure you check the run out of the cutter, even 0.001" run out can cause you issues when using such small cutters. good luck

Don't think it's this. More likely is to do with monitoring of the cutter vibration, spindle collision etc from the looks of the icons ?

not easy to set up as far as tolerancing goes but if you can set up the od turning tool and boring bar to turn at the same time this can work quite well as it balances the cutting forces against each other

you might need to update your hasp driver

Can someone explain to me what these soft keys on our DMG do ? Can't find any referance in the DMG manual that came with the machine. http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/yy157/mrfish_2010/IMG_0128.jpg Thanks

Yip thats them. Used them heaps. Very good product, have cut alot of 17-4ph stainless hardened to H900 and they work great, a pretty good test. Also cut some tapered splines with a custom 6 tipped simtek t-slot cutter in a 4th axis for the motor shafts on this http://martinjetpack.com/ Do some great little solid carbide boring bars for the lathe too. I did here a rumor once that they company was started by some guys from PH horn, but they seem to have a much larger range of t-slot cutters than them and we found there coating and grind geometry to work alot better in the 17-4.

Internal tool or simtek t-slot cutters simtek do a T-slot cutter with interchangeable heads in there Sigma line that is 28 OD and has a max cut depth of 6.5mm or a 32 OD with 8.5mm