The real cheek is their charging extra for the DWG translator!!!!!

Measure it with a micrometer Mark it with a greas pen Cut it with an axe

Been using these cutters for 3 years now, Ive a preference for the 17mm inserts over the 11mm. Someone mentioned they dont like cutting chips, yup, thats a problem, and to get the best you must use a good directed air blast to keep the immediate cutting area clear. When we first bought these our sandvik rep gave us a demo with a 25mm 17mm inserted tool, full width slotting in mild steel 5mm deep, ramp feed in etc on a conventional machine..... feed rate 1150 mm/min SOLD

Thats not exactly true, torque isnt a major concern when your cutting wood, plus torque is a function of HP, ie you can get more torque a given spindle speed with a higer HP motor. Gearing is important though, a lower HP motor can give more torque than one of a higher HP, but that is created by sacrificing spindle speed, further you can often get higher spindle speeds with a belt driven spindle than with a geared spindle, but you are sacrificing the torque transmissability of the drive chain. It all boils down to how the machine is built AND what you are using it for, without any extensive experience with wood machining I would be looking for a head with high spindle speed and high horse power The following formula does correctly define all three factors. Power = torque * rpm tfr rpm = Power / torque and torque = Power / rpm either way you look at it more power gives you more torque AND/OR more rpm.

aaaarrghh!!! we lost!!!!! well, good luck to the USA vs Germany, hope you fair better than we!

HP is king get as much as you can, spindle speed and torque are trade offs of each other, and with wood you will need less torque so you an afford to have the head regeared to give you higher spindle speeds

Dont get me wrong, Ireland were playing well, they did very well to get as far as they did, and extreamly well to take their last game to penalties, but they were never a team considered to be in the front running and their departure is nothing like the magnitude of the departure of the likes of France, Argentina and Italy, losing to penalties is heartbreaking for any team. The Roy Keane debacle was in my view entirely down to Roy Keane having a big mouth!, it seams that the guy had a non stop winge at just about everything whilst he was over there and then had an explosive bust up with his manager (who he didnt like because he wasn't Irish. And so, on to tomorow, England v Brazil, this is going to be the match that decideds who wins the Worl Cup as after this the winners will have a clear path to the Cup. After tomorrow, well is an England/Germany final on the cards? If so, then the pressure on the Germans will be crippling as they will not only have to erase their 1:5 slaugter in Munich last year, but the last time England met Germany in the Finals was of course in 1966, and the Germans have been praying that England win another world cup ever since then, just so we will stop replaying the damn match highlights.... heres a little statistic Ive made up, is it true?:- most replayed sporting moment in sporting history ever!:- Geoff Hursts final goal in the 1966 world cup final

If you want to silence the Germans just start chanting 1:5 it works for us England supporters Ireland are not really a surprise out if they nor turkey a surprise in. re the Korea Italy game, a little snippet that is really pissing me off is the news that an the Italian club that Koreas match winning goal scorer played for have sacked him for and I quote 'biting the hand that feeds him', and 'making fools of his clubs home nation' this is a very dangerous precident and if every club sacked players who scored against their national team then there would either be no more national teams, or no more foreign players in club football!

the use of dual machines depends entirely on how you work, if you just run one package (ie masterCAM) and nothing else on your machine, and dont see any value in running mastercam twice then dont botehr, use the cash for a top notch graphics card, better procesor, more memory. If however, you tend to do a lot of multi tasking, and may have a CAD package and MasterCAM running similtaneously then they are great, especially if you find a lot of your jobs are slow to process, and you would rather do something constructive than sit and watch the screen whil it crunches the latest toolpath

your right Trevor. I do have issues with MasterCAM, and if I cant air them here where else can I air them? For the first time in a long while Ive found myself unable to justify upgrading a product that Ive had a long relationship with, and have found that their upgrade policy has become cynical. take V9, V9 does has a lot of nice added functionality should you happen to use solids, if you dont use solids then the added functionality is limited, and when you consider the added post work required to take advintage of it, it verges on being a liability!. So why must V9 users pay £#### for the upgrade whilst solids users only pay an added £###, surely theyve got that backwards! Of course I forget that there are a number of people here who have a vested interest in talking up the product, well, Ive got news for you guys, there are some of us out here you are not happy, and have been seriously considering better alternatives. Dont get me wrong, I agree with you entirely MasterCAM isnt a CAD package, and should never be marketed as a CAD package (its a pity some dissagree!), and comparing it to CAD packages is unfair, I appreciate that there are some users who dont need full CAD functionality and that there are benefits in having a CAM package that can do CAD, BUT, there are a lot of people who need FULL CAD functionality and CAM, and my advice is always DONT go with MCAM solids to give you solids CAD as it is underfuctioning for the price, I agree that the functionality is increasing, but so is that of its CAD competitors, and for the money I save on solids I can buy a fully functioning solids CAD package! Now you may not like my frank assesment, well thats unfortunate, but the guy who started this thread asked for advice and opinions, I think what he really wanted was non partizan advice and not that from individuals who have a vested interest in talking up the product, after all the guy already has a dealer trying to flog the package to him! So now MasterCAM are selling Solids at only $### (Im still being quoted £####!), this is good news, a step in the right direction and when they stop this cynical policy and integrate solids as a core feature where it belongs! then and only THEN will I again rate MasterCAM as being the best value package on the market! And as far as what you think this forum should or should not be, ask yourself if you really want it to become a rose tinted world where everthing MasterCAM is good everthing else BAD, that attitude reduces the forum to little other than a marketing mouthpiece rather than a place where people can freely express their opinions good or bad! And as for what others may or have been up to here, then I appologise for Ive been away for a while, and dont like being tarred with other peoples brushes, those who remember me know that my opinions are always forthright, but justifiable, if only because I am a MasterCAM customer with a strong view as to the direction I want to develope the CAE and manufacturing policies within my company, policies that have enabled the company to expand and fend off direct competition from South East Asia where the vast majority of our western counterparts are floundering and going under. [ 05-28-2002, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: Webmaster ]

At the time that was true, it was also once upon a time true that mastercam would not work in windows .. Your point? MasterCAM as a CAD package still has a long way to go, whilst MasterCAM now has a layout mode it is still way under functioned, and its CAD competitors have moved on as well, anyone who actually consides MasterCAM for CAD is wasting their money. My advice remains the same today as it has done all along, dont bother with MasterCAM solids, save the cash to buy a solids CAD package (and I still reccomend Cadkey), this especially is true if you are not using L3 MasterCAM. By doing this you reap all the benefits of solids that do really save time in the long run, yet dont have to pay through the nose for MasterCAM solids. Better still hold on to your cash for a year or so, there are a number of CAM packages that have really proven themselves in recent years where solids is a core feature and not some overpriced add on!

And now for the realists opinion. Solids is great, as you see people who use it wouldnt use anything else, I wouldnt use anything else FOR CAD (BTW I dont use mastrcam solids for CAD as its overpriced and under functioned for CAD), but thats because I like to reap non machining benefits from solids, however if you are on a tight budget and want functionality then..... 1 solids will give you no more 2D and 2 1/2D functionality that you already have with L1 2 I repeat, with solids there is nothing you cant do with wireframe L1 3 It takes a little bit longer to generate a 2 1/2 D solid than it does to create a basic wireframe, with experience this isnt much longer. 4 Once you have a solid image of the part you are instantly able to recognise the part as what it is, and can instantly notice any irregularities, REMEBER WHAT YO SEE IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GET 5 with solids its easier to generate correct machining profiles and a lot of the potential pitfalls that a competent programer would be aware of are practically automated out of the process, its very difficult to 'forget' to chain that island as Mastercam will recognise it as an island providing the guy who generated the solid put the island there in the first place... This point is important because in my experience the guy who forgets to chain the island in the machining profile is usually the same guy who forgets to add the island to the solid. 6 Everything you hear about not having to chain this or that is misleading, the truth is that unless you are supplied with a solid file you WILL have to create the solid and in the process of creating the solid you will have to chain that which everyone else says you dont have to chain!!!, the bottom line is that the onus is moved from the machining operations to the solids generation operations. My bottom line is that solids for 2D is extreamly over-rated, Im extreamly dissapointed to the point of being dissafected with mastercam over V9, most of the functionality that V9 adds is solids based, yet us non solids users are expected to foot the bill at £#### and then pay an extra £#### to use this functionality, the cost of all this added functionality should go onto the bill for those who have already purchased solids, not expect everyone else to pay for it. Consequence is that Ive take the discision to now allow mastrercam to lapse which will enable me to take a fresh look at better value CAD/CAM packages a few years down the line! [ 05-28-2002, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: Webmaster ]

This is actually a much more interesting top[ic than it may first appear. nowadays many machines can move as fast as their rapid travers speed with a G01 fnnnn command, but, Ive noticed that some machines actually operate a lot smother if you use the G01F method rather than a G00. This I believe is down to the machine not performing an exact stop as it may do with a G01/G00 changeover. anyone else experenced this?

conversational vs ISO 1. With conversational you are often limited in application by the flexibility engineered into the conversational language, where with ISO a competent experienced programmer can do anything he wants, and I mean anything, you want to turn your CNC lathe into a quick broach...NP, want to pull a load of shortcuts to reduce your cycle time to a fraction of current...NP, want use your CNC mill as an impromptu lathe...NP, fit a power drill to your CNC lathe to give you Heath-Robinson driven tooling ...NP, there are few if any conversational languages that can accomodate this kind of trickery. 2. With ISO you are far more likely to xxxx it up, especially if you are limited on experience, youve got to think through every line of handwritten code and double check it then dry rune etc... 3. If you are using a CAM package then its ISO all the way, Ive written posts for conversational languages, but its far easier with ISO. 4. ISO is ISO (more or less), you know ISO then you have the keys to 95% of the worlds CNC machinery wheather its lathes, mills, wire cuts, EDM the lot work on more or less the same code, conversational is machine/controller specific, and you often need to learn a new language for each one of them. ISO from scratch :- G00, G01, G02, G03 -all linear and arc moves M06 toolchange M03, M05, M05 spindle commands M08, M09 coolant control M30, M02, M99 program termination thats about it, understand these codes and youve got 80% of ISO cracked and can do practically anything, the next 10% are your drilling and threading commands (lesson 2) and the last 10% is everything else, dig out your machine manual dont get put off by the breadth of G and M codes in there because most of them you will use rarely, just quickly read the description and then only re-read the section if you think you may need that command to solve a particular problem.

A heretic, burn him!!!! Funnily enough Ive felt that V9 has been overhyped too, about the only major differences between V9 and V8 seam to be those with solids functionality, and speaking for a company that dosnt need solids functions in MasterCAM, then I dont see why we should pay for added functions in an add on that we dont have. But still, Im going to take a look at a 30 day demo, but Im not going to be easilly convinced, especially after all the problems Ive been hearing about its stability, better the tortoise than the hare I say!