Nah......that's who you need to call about. Go to a regional manager or higher. Chances are that if the service guys know nothing it's because of the manager.......Call regional and suggest to them that these guys, including the manager, need to take/retake the training program that Mitsibishi has......in the meantime you need someone from another facility to address your issues. Sqeakiest wheel......

With all due respect, I am pretty sure that I'm getting the best end of the deal not buying from these clowns again. Service isn't the only ball they dropped. Options are either go with Millenium or fly someone from Japan, which I confirmed with several independents. When you run the only game in town you get to treat customers like garbage.

Detroit area here. Not hard to beleive there is such a vast difference in service and knowledge. It is hard to beleive they let it happen tho......I would complain to someone up the chain from service location.

Like the service manager for Millenium? I did, nothing.

Where r u located KoKo ?

Northeast. Service was through Millenium. As I said it was a used (very clean) machine, and the issues that needed service were of the standard everyday maintenance issues. Not chasing electrical gremlins or anything like that. Both techs that have serviced the machine could not operate it at all, one even had to ask me to jog the machine.

FWIW I have had nothing but issues with Mits service and support of the SX10 we purchased used. Service in your area may consist of more competent individuals, but I had issues dealing with the head office as well. I'm shopping for a new machine to replace the one on my floor, Mit's is not on my list at all.

I'm looking into some new design software here at work. The owner keeps going back and forth on whether to spend the extra $4k+ to get a new design suite.

 

I have been working with the downloaded trial of Solidedge, but can't even get a reply email from Solidworks.

 

 

Anyone care to explain why one is better than the other? I've read numerous posts on other boards, but everything is so biased. Everyone has an opinion, but no information to back it up... just "I LIKE SW/SE BETTER...."

 

Also, if there is another design package out there i should be looking into, please let me know.

 

 

 

We will eventually be designing and machining plastic injection molds, and we definitely want the ability to see assemblies in motion. Stress analysis is a plus, but not an absolute necessity.

It's going be to difficult to get a true comparison between the two as finding people that actually make use of each softwares capability is going to be tricky. Most folks are comfortable with one environment, and are used to it's ecosystem. They might change jobs, but are by and large going to be hired based on their experience in the system that they are familiar in. Most larger companies won't ditch their investment in a particular system unless it's *really* burned them, as the cost of switching goes well beyond just the software itself.

Most folks are only going to know one system, and that's why all they have is an opinion. Talk to people that do the kind of work that you do, find out what they use and why. Sometimes it's that one software was a better deal, sometimes it's that one had the one feature that *they* couldn't live without. Sometimes it's an industry specific thing.

The material is 9310 and 4340. Annealed. About 1.2" thick X 24" long X 2" wide. The profile that is cut will be finish machined and I'd like to see something like .010" excess after being lased.

 

What kind of accuracy can I expect compared to water jet? Are there any negative affects to the steel from the laser? If so, how deep does the affected area go?

 

What kind of price should I expect to pay?

Not going to reasonably happen. 4340 is going to harden like hell at the cut in the case of laser. Assuming you could find someone with a powerful enough machine, I'd guess that the HAZ would be pretty deep. I don't know of any 5 axis machines is the power range that would be needed, so you'd have a "significant" draft, holding .010 off finish won't happen over the entire face. We have issue here with ~.08-.104 4340 getting hard enough to rip the threads off a tap when they insist on lasering the holes. The poor edge finish beats up carbide if you try to use that to clean it out. It's not something I would start with if I wanted to wind up with nice gear teeth.

Your options are pretty much tilting head waterjet, Wire EDM, or just machine from barstock if available.

Why not use taper mill? just curious.

Because a taper mill does not describe the shape accurately. I believe the end mill in question has a taper leading from the cutter dia to the shank dia. It's this taper that is trying to be modeled.

To the OP, I just make the shoulder dia such that it extends into the actual flute area. Doesn't work when you need every last little bit out of the cutter though.

Currently you can smoke in most areas of the our shop (nowhere in the office). Exceptions are the powder coat room, deburring, and the machine shop/toolroom. The toolroom is a personal option, but none of us in there smoke. We have a fairly open policy, but it's also with the understanding that abuse will lead to it being taken away. Personally I could give a #@$!, I quit 8 or 9 years ago, and as long as someone isn't blowing smoke in my face it doesn't effect me much.

Hi All.

 

I have the oddest problem. I just received a new HP Z400 workstation with all of the bells and whistles. Win7 x64 12GB ram and XEON proscessors. When I go into the office in the morning and fire up my new toy all seems OK. When I start Mastercam X5 Mu1 basically Nothing happens. The task manager shows Mastercam running. but it never starts. I can fire up 10 sessions and 10 are shown running in the task manager, but Mastercam never actually fires up. If I go to the hardware manger it says that it sees the USB HASP and that it is working OK.

 

If I go to the Mastercam HASPX in the start menu it gives me all of the info for the USB hasp, so it can see it, and it thinks that all is working OK. But still the program never actually starts.

 

 

If I kill all of the sessions in the task manger then remove the HASP and start mastercam The same thing happens, Mastercam running in the task manger but no errors and I do not get the HASP not found error.

 

I have reinstalled the Aladin USB drivers and still this problem persists. The only fix is to reboot the machine a few times and then change the USB plugs to different ports. I have only the standard stuff, 3D connexion, Office 2007 Firefox and Solidworks. Has anybody seen something like this?

Maybe look at your 3D Connexion drivers, or try removing it and the drivers completely. Sometimes you can get some bizzare interactions between certain things and USB. Strip back as much as possible and then add till you get the problem back.

For bent parts, solidworks will do almost everything you need. It will not "unemboss", or "unstamp" complex contoured geometry, although there are several add ins that will do just that. One thing to remember is that just as important as the software is it's setup and config. Different bending tools will have different results making the same or similar bends. Different materials will also effect things. No matter what anyone tells you there is always adjustments needed to what the software spits out.

As for converting a solid to sheetmetal in SW, I do it all the time. Funky embosses or whatnot will break it, but with some creativity you can get around it. Delete the problem faces back to a simple surface, then thicken back to get a sheet with thickness. Then apply the conversion to sheet metal. Be careful when doing this that the thickened sheet matches the geometry you want, you can get into trouble with curved bent edges.

Would this work with a sheetmetal type part model with bends?

It depends on many factors, but a lot depends on how accurate you want the final result to be, and what radius the bends are at. Vanilla Solidworks has functions that fold/unfold models, and allow you to chose different bend radii and other material properties that govern the behavior of a bend. Then there are fancier add on modules that let you go further, unfolding more complex geometry and flattening more complex 3d forms. If it's a simple box part, you can take a test strip of a known length, and then bend it with the tooling you will use, then measure the resultant "L" on the outside to see how material will react and then draw the appropriate shape.

This is NOT the issue the software was pulled on.

 

It is more likely the wrong destination was used when updating

This is exactly the problem I mentioned in another thread. I know you mean well but PLEASE STOP. You don't know. CNC software didn't tell you, and if they did, you aren't supposed to pass it on. In the absence of actual info from the company producing the software, you put the only piece of info on this board about why it was pulled. Stop adding to a train of misinformation (however well intended).

"got an example of this?

We test,

We submit,

We suggest, thats it.

We have no influence on what gets fixed. "

No, they build expectations in the users who aren't able to see it. I never said anything about influencing what gets fixed.

"kudos to CNC for pulling X6 for repairs, just wish they would have put a notice with a "slight" explanation on their website."

This +100. They spend an awful lot of time preparing people and sending out press releases to dealers about the software coming. Roll out events, etc etc. That's great but taking care of customers means keeping them informed about the good and the bad. I have a bunch of folks waiting on me for upgrades to other software which cannot proceed without MCAM. I can't tell them anything because no one communicates what that actual status of the product is. The only thing I can do is due diligence trying to get the software to misbehave before I move it into full rotation. I thought the beta testers were supposed to do this?

With all due respect to the help given by some of the beta testers, you guys probably would do more help actually keeping quiet about things. It may be in your best intentions, but you make comments on a public forum that build expectations. You have to consider that you are the ONLY source of info and how people might interpret this.

Im firly certain mastercam is only capable of processing with a single core at the moment...not sure if there is plans to change this in the future??? would be nice though!

Sort of, each high speed path will use one core independently. Only high speed paths though, and no way to use multiple cores for one path. Provides an advantage when you have multiple high speed paths that need regeneration.

Not super familiar with the alloy but would it be possible to normalize and then re heat treat to relieve the stress?

We are an SW shop, and I have used it for ~10 years. I do all my tool design in Solidworks, I can't be bothered using MC's geometry creation to draw something unless it's exceptionally simple. There are things that SW can do that MC can't (as far as I know) such as relating features between parts in an assembly. SW can have features dependent on features in another part, IE clear holes in one part are related to the position of tap holes in another. Move the tapped hole and the clear hole moves with it. Likewise I use a lot of the mold tools in SW in a similar way. Making a cavity (I know you can use boolean ops in MC) in SW which is dependent on the shape of the original part, and will change if you change the original geometry. While these things can be worked around, as with most stuff it's a matter of time, which of course is a matter of money.

Is anybody else having issues with this? If I dynamic transform (any complexity of geometry), the result preview works, but will disappear. No matter if I clear colors or repaint, it will not re-appear. I have to save and reopen and it will reappear.

 

Sometimes, Dynamic Xform will create secondary geometry (move, not copy) which I have to select and delete. If I use normal transform>mirror, the preview will not work.

 

Where can I disable the windows active pop up windows and stuff. You know when you hover over a tab on the toolbar a small preview window pops up? I wonder if that is contributing to the problem.

 

In my MC settings, I have OpenGL, Disable front buffer, and Disable hardware acceleration selected. FYI

I use dynamic X form on almost every part I import from SW. MCX5, Win7. No issue whatsoever, graphics card is a Quadro 600.

Thanks, much appreciated!

To anyone running both, can X5 open native 2011 .SLDPRT files?

I run X4MU3 on a Parallels VM at times. Works well.

+1 on the bent pins. CF cards have a LOT of tiny pins, and these do wear out. I've had a lot of issues with crappy USB card readers going long before the cards themselves. If you can read and format the card on a PC, and verify that you have files there, it's probably on the other end.

Bah, it took out the bracketed ctrl's. Make that ctrl-c and ctrl-v

I just select what I want, hit -C, go to the new sketch, part whatever and -V.

Save before verify, and check drill points.