Could someone do this via webex. I have held lots of meeting with webex and it works out very good. This way you would not need a body in Michigan.

Well I have been to couple of companies that refuse to buy it and have seen contracts lossed because simple little consistant mistakes that could have been caught by Vericut. I posted another programmer job a few years back. It was a nutating machine ( c-axis ) and Mastercam Inverted the axis on a goto point. It hit the foam tool at 1800 ipm (linear ways). Was not my mistake, but I would have caught it if they had ran it through Vericut. If you are a small machine shop and produce good parts on a consistant basis Vericut will pay for it's self by bringing in more work. It's alot easier to see which side of machine you are on with you have muliple tool axis solutions. Jamey X4

I honestly had to google solid edge. I know nothing about it other then it was a seimens product. Do know it's always best to stick w/ the same system for cam and cad....If possible Looked at you home page and think I will copy that disclaimer into every one of my contracts Jamey

Bill- Don't forget that you will need Vericut with whatever system you use. Need a budget for training and building machine kinematics. I don't care how big or small your shop is. It's a tool that every shop should have! Every system has a verification, but I have not seen one that is as complete as Vericut. How much does a spindle cost, time down, Material, Cutters?

I drive both Mastercam and Unigraphics. I do alot of work with large ( forgings ) hard metal parts in Unigrahics. Some of the parts go across muliple 4-5-axis machines and after desiging the tooling and creating all the prints, the tooling may change because I need to get to a small clevis on the side of a part and a tower is in the way. If i modeled it in solid works and brought it into mastercam I loss all my drafting and model associativity. If modeled and programmed in UG i can change the tower height and my drafting updates and the manufacuring as well. This is time save for me. If I have a part in a vise or technigrip and it's cut on one machine in 2-3 ops way not mastercam! The G-post Postbuilder in UG is very easy too use for anyone and there is lots of custom macros you can download from the UG site. Jamey

Mr Dayshift- Not a post builder expert at all , but don't believe (unless it's something new) you can just edit the code and it updates the post..... That would be too easy! Also note if you want to get real custom with the post you better know tcl or grip. There are fewer UG programmer then Mastercam programmers since the learning curve is greater. The difference is like driving a cessna compared to a 747.....a lot of buttons and the training is more extensive. They both get you from point A to point B, but a short flight would not be practical in a 747! Jamey

Bill- Have you used both systems? Mastercam is very user friendly and great if you are a job shop and not designing and manufacturing. It doen't matter what tool you use as long as it's the right one for the job. I don't use a machete to cut butter, but don't use a butter knife to cut shrubs.....Some may get really good at using a butter knife to cut shrubs, but not the best way to do it. " It depends on what you are doing " Jamey X4

First....I know this is a Mastercam forum...so don't get all excited..... Tyler can you bring it back into UG and program the holes there? I am only saying this, because it would take about 20 seconds to drill the 30,000 holes including generating the toolpath. You would not have to create a single piece of geo. You simply select the face that has the holes in it " all holes in face" It even lets you select all holes in face between min and max hole sizes. Then you select "normal to part surface" and generate. Since you work for in house can this be put into the suggestion box? Jamey X4

I made this post about operations going dirty and no one else had the same issue...? Anyhow after reinstalling a new hard drive and reloading everything, somehow my operations don't get dirty as often. It was happening every day and now I can go days or a week with out all my ops getting dirty/ or a group of them....don't know what I changed, but it's better. The program that was the issue is not the issue after spending the last couple of day back on it. The program has close to 400 operations and i never re-gen them....it would take 20 min since 80 percent are 5-axis ops. So, I just close and reopen and everything is fine. x4

That would be a very useful tool to add. Wish it was there now every day.... Tell Ben hello..........CD is going to miss him....Who is going to work the 12 hr days 7 days a week!

That would be nice if you could do this... [imghttp://www5.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=437800026/a=727565026_727565026/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/[/img] I will buy a the first round if you will add one more to the burger invite?

I just programmed couple of jobs with a through spindle coolant driven head on a 5-axis. The machine is a cin V5 with a spindle you can clock to get normal to a MDD. The machine takes in account for tool gage and used curve 5-axis with the an offset from the MDD to rotate A and B. To clock the spindle I inserted a rotation, This can also be clocked at the pre-post level. My customer used Austin Nc's Cimpro and it allows me to insert exactly where I want. Jamey X4

I just programmed couple of jobs with a through spindle coolant driven head on a 5-axis. The machine is a cin V5 with a spindle you can clock to get normal to a MDD. The machine takes in account for tool gage and used curve 5-axis with the an offset from the MDD to rotate A and B. To clock the spindle I inserted a rotation, This can also be clocked at the pre-post level. My customer used Austin Nc's Cimpro and it allows me to insert exactly where I want. Jamey X4

Guessing the blade is a forging and volumill would be better suited for a block. The ceramics would beat the hell out of your machine. Conventional though the skin will save on tool life. The Hanita Varimills have worked great for me but have never used the stabilizer? Guessing you nest a bunch of them on a fixture to turn them and now milling the ends? Jamey X4

The HSK50 is a little weak for some of the cuts you have to rotate A and B over and have a tool sticking out past a gage of 7.0". I like the HSK 100 or KM if its an option. The body on the KM is a little longer and the draw bar pull is stronger. They use one more ball to expand the body and draw it up in the spindle. Not sure if hsk 100 is an option on those smaller machines. X4

Currently using transform mirror. Mastercam does a very good job of making it easy to mirror. However I was tempted to use the Mirror C-hook to see if it works without having to change the start surfaces and chains. Does it reverse your drive direction? Is there anyone using this c-hook for mirrors? Want to know if there is any issues using this and if it makes mirrors easier? Thanks X4

+1 for SLJ.....There was a production job on a cell running none stop with a cutter very simular to the indexable iscar theepres was talking about. The machine did not have a very fast spindle ( 15000 rpm ) and the insert hit the corner wrong and exploded. The insert went through the plexiglass then hit the wall on the back side of the machine. It left a mark in the wall that was brick 2 x 2 x .5 deep. Ever since I used solid carbide. Just something to think about. X4 NX V5 NCL

Can you control your lintol and max angle at the post level?

Aww very good info......Typically don't modify any of my solids in Mastercam this should work good.... Cheers!

Thanks Laszlok! I imported a model of a 90 degree angle head ( That was .step in ) and positioned it all over to get normal to a MDD. That was the problem solid. What I don't understand is that I had 2 of the exact same models that didn't blow up and were translated around to different positions? gcode- I had changed my chaining tolerance in the past ( VER. 9 ) and when moving from one work station to another where the chaining tolerances settings were different there were solid issues....so I just leave them alone Just got a resource required error......huh... Thanks

The issue was dirty solids. They were not dirty the first time I opened the file but closed and reopended and there they were. The solid was a Step file that was modified. Seems like the solids are a little unstable. That is just my opinion since I had no issues opening the file multiple times with out any dirty solids.

Ok, so when saving a file this morning it was fine after reopening it a few minutes later. Now when I open the file I get a " No matching op file" Everything seems to be ok? None of the solids are dirty. And the operations are ok. This part was xformed mirrored and all of the solids were created in Catia. Any Ideas on how to get rid of this warning? I did a search and this goes back a few versions. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Jamey Using X4

This is a great topic! I believe the welding process is called friction stir welding.....Not 100 percent sure though

Strecher plate........7055

Use stecher plate it will lay flat as a pancake every time. I cut steps in a .125 thick plate when machining was an option to chem-milling. The material when released from the vacuum curled 360 degrees. I had our buyer pick up a piece of stetcher plate and it sat on the vacuum plate after machining.....Good luck