Chuckles, There is no relationship between the original feed of the cutting tool and the feed values posted when using the high feed option. Also, you might see feed values higher than the maximum feed rates you specified because of the "air cutting feed rate" value. The air cutting feed rate is the feed rate the machine moves at whenever Mastercam detects that no material is being cut, for example: after a pocket is finished roughing and the tool is travelling across the pocket floor ("keep tool down") to take a finish cut around the periphery of an island in the pocket. If you set "air cutting feed" to or near the maximum feed rate your machine is capable of it saves a considerable amount of time, particularily in big mould programs. Also you might experience a situation where using high feed will actually give you a slower cycle time than what you had programed on the original toolpath because of deacceleration in the corners. At first, this wouldn't seem to be an advantage but the benefit comes in things like fewer broken tools, longer tool life and not changing those broken tools every 20 minutes. High feed is a combination of material volume based and machine dynamics so it'll take some playing with different combinations of feed, look ahead and acc/dec to find out what works best for your machine. Try hitting Alt-H and go through the Help stuff provided with Mastercam on Highfeed and you'll be a little wiser. Good luck, Steve

Hi Matt, What language is the robot programmed in. Does it take standard g-code or other proprietary code. I've never heard of robots being programmed offline but I smell a challenge and I can't see why it wouldn't be possible. Post a sample of the required code or better yet, talk to your reseller about setting up a post processor.

poconnor, I had this problem in v8.1.1 as well. Either it wouldn't show anything being machined or the facemill would take 1/4" in verify when I had only specified a .01 or .02 depth of cut. Maybe a video card problem? Steve

Wow Scott...VERSION 0?!?. I have total respect for you guys that have been 'loyal' to Mcam all these years. My introduction to Mastercam was 7.2 and even that seems arcaic to me now. Webby, how about establishing a Mastercam Hall 'o Fame for all these guys that have developed the software and worked with CNC since the beginning? Or even a timeline chart to see how far Mastercam has come since the earth cooled (what year did version 0 come out anyway?). Hats off to you guys, Steve

Hey HM, will your control take a B-90 command? Mastercam may be trying to index on the shortest route possible but the post isn't creating the - direction character. Just a guess, Steve

Diedesigner, This is one of the many reasons some tool and mold shops are beginning to invest in 5 axis mills. The cutter can be maintained at a specific angle to the surface normals during finish machining to prevent material "dragging" that occurs when cutting on center of a ballnose. To get away from this in 3 axis machining I use flat endmills whenever possible on horizontal or near horizontal surfaces. Up milling on a 10 or 20 degree sloped surface using finish, parrallel, one way with a flat endmill and small stepover can give really nice surface finishes. Steve

...and output the long hand code as a sub program. Then you can see what it's doing instead of sifting through 30 miles of g-code. Might be worth a try anyway...

Jammmer, your post can output drilling cycles in long code which would give you what you want (at the expense of a short program), although I don't know off hand where to find it in your post. Maybe someone'll chime in soon and tell you where to look, Steve

Karl, try running Highfeed on your toolpath, it's material volume based so it should speed up after the first spiral is complete.I've never tried Highfeed on a projected t.p. but I can't see why it wouldn't work. Steve

Diedesigner, I've often created curves on the surface(s) edge, translated and copied them in the desired direction and used the curves to create an additional ruled surface. Good luck, steve

Elad, any post supporting sub programs should be able to give you multi work offsets by translating toolpaths between points origin and origin, copying them any number of times and setting the work offset number increase per sub program by whatever amount you like (G54,G55,G56 = 1, G54,G56,G58 = 2, etc.). I've never tried the post "MACHINEMASTERG" mentioned but it sounds interesting

Elad, I've found subs work well for machining molds with alot of repeating features by posting the sub as and incremental sub-routine. Keeps the program short and easy to pick up where you left off if the machine needs to be shut down. BTW, there's no loss in accuracy by posting it as incremental since the post calculates the moves internally from absolute positions. Steve

You're getting a tool command at the end of your programs because the post is staging tools. Look through the user switches in your post processor and turn stagetool off. Steve

Francis, try Main Menu, Analyze, Chain and select your pocket boundary starting at different points on the chain. The arrow specifying chain direction will likely keep snapping to a single intersection or location and that is where your chain is open. Go to Modify, Trim, 2 Entities and trim the two entities at the intersection to each other to close the opening and re-analyze the chain. If the arrow snaps to the closest point of the area you select the chain then it is fixed...if it keeps snapping to a different point/intersection even when you select the chain from a different area then it will need to be trimmed there as well. Good luck and let us know how it worked, Steve

quote: "I think we should light off a nuke a hundred miles or so (definitely within eyesight) of Baghdad! Send a message..... They seem to like to send messages, let's send one of our own, from half a world away no less. Let those rat xxxx know they've messed with the best and that they should be prepared to die like the rest. " I lean a little more towards the whole ".50 caliber from half a mile away" idea. A little homework would reveal that the Iraqi people have a lot less distain for America than Saddam and his hench men. This idea of "to hell with all of them" is exactly the kind of foreign policy that continuously puts America in the bad books with the majority of the Middle East. I in no way condone terrorism and those who conspired 9/11 should pay the due consequence but shooting first and asking questions later is a proven mistake. Did the West ever take the time to think about where Saddam got the technology and know how to produce these weapons? 30 some odd years ago the States poured billions of dollars into Iraq to aid in the war against Iran and now it is costing. I just think some foresight is in order although it appears to be too late for that since war is inevitable with Iraq. My 2c. Steve

Nominal, I work in a R & D shop and we are machining Hast C276 all the time. My suggestion is forget about tapping this stuff altogether...I had a job that needed alot of tapped holes that were supposed to be dead on center so instead of burning out broken taps or scrapping $500 material we had a carbide thread milling tool custom ground and took about .01" cut per pass with low RPM and thread milled all the holes. Just hit the magic button and walk away without worrying about sparks flying. That's my 2 cents anyway, Steve

efred, you might not be able to trick Mastercam but try changing B180 to B0 in the nc file or disable rotary indexing in the post.

I came across this awhile back and I don't have the post documentation in front of me so this won't be very specific but you'll need to use a string I believe to output the ascii character number for "#". I think there's already an allowance for this in the post processor so try a search for the word "pound" and you might run across it. steve

Chad, Why not get them to create the part and program. Obviously, they'll try to make it look as complex as possible to impress a potential employer which will give an idea of their ability to create geometery and toolpaths as well as their creativity in approaching a problem or situation. Hope you find a good one, Steve

ooley, I've run into this before if I understand your question correctly. I've found that changing which point you select first affects which side the dimension will snap to. For example creating a vertical dimension and the dimension keeps snapping to the left side, pick the points in reverse order and the dimension will snap to the right side. Same goes for horizontal and angular dimensioning. Steve

bhyde, Mastercam is not likely your problem but the post processor probably is. If Cimatron was outputting code that worked and Mastercam isn't, compare two files from identical/similar toolpaths using something like Cimco Edit and find out where the differences are. Your post can be modified to output exactly the same as Cimatron or whatever it takes to make your control swallow the code. If your find the "offending" H in your programs, post a sample of the program lines before and after the problem and somebody will help you fix the problem in your post processor. Steve

Thanks for the tip Bryan, I'll check it out soon. James, Metrolosys looks great and all and Verisurf will accomplish the same thing...but for a price. If all I need to do is pick up 0,0,0 on my work and measure the tools, I think a custom c-hook would get the job done nicely. Nothing fancy, just the basics.

Hi all, I'm interested in getting my hands on some info about writing c-hooks. I would like to create a new toolpath called "Probe" for generating spindle and tool offset probe routines from within Mastercam. I think I can handle the post processing half of it but I would like to learn some c-hook writing. This may be way over my head and should probably go in the thread about "v10 wish list" but I'm always up for a challenge. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Steve

Mark, Along with a comment your post could be edited to output macro programs when rotary axis was enabled if your controls support macro. With a M00 at program start the operator would have to specify at the beginning of a program which machine the part was being run on by means of a variable value in the macro program (1 = machine 1 rotation type, 2 = machine 2 rotation type, etc.) and the program would compensate as required. This would eliminate having to generate different programs for different machines as well as eliminate alot of operator error. Steve