Is 88' long enough? http://www.janicki.com/services/CNCmachining.htm

yeah, I agree SAIPEM. I uses M19 to orientated the spindal too. Good grammar isn't indicative of a good machinist.

Bruce, I think you hit the nail on the head about big egos having to relinquish power...but if it's good for the business it's good for the employees. I think some are satisfied with the office, cell phones and feel good meetings but finding the people who are willing to make twice as much by spending time on the floor and in the office can make a difference. A friend of mine started a job a few years back doing tool repair for a casting company and he was told on the first day..."if we have to babysit you, you're gone". Long story short, he showed interest and proficiency and now his employer is covering the cost on a 2 year diploma in manufacturing management, he designs all their tooling and manages the entire toolmaking process. I've never forgotten that quote and after one year of self-employment I'm trying to hire people that can be left alone for a day and be just as productive as if someone was breathing down their neck. I don't have time to babysit and they don't have time to waste so why not put them in charge of their own job...they'll be happier and so will I. On a side note, here's a bit of shameless self-promotion: www.muvdesign.com steve

quote: You can go to all the seminars that you want and train management to the gills and the average worker will sandbag every job. Management cannot be out on the floor every second and with the mindset of the American workers the way it is, I see alot of people going hungry before they will change their attitudes. I couldn't agree with this more. I think management should be the worker, the guy on the floor. With the amount of automation available in every level of business from manufacturing to quoting and admin, I think the only way to survive is to get beyond the classic business model of multiple levels of hierarchy. If the the button pusher on the floor is involved enough in the decision making process of running a business that they risk the personal loss (ie: their job) of a stupid decision, they become managers. If enough companies were structured this way, it wouldn't take long and the guys sitting around on their thumbs would quickly change their attitude or be out of a job...not to mention productivity would probably increase. Unions must go the way of the dinosaur if manufacturing will survive...gov'ts have already legislated protection for the average worker. my rant steve

I agree with James on everything he said. I really miss the customizable hotkeys...my productivity in X is way down just because my mouse does all the work. V9 and previous was fast because I could work through the commands on the left side of the keyboard by memory and use the mouse for geometery selection, etc. Yeah, "create, line, horizontal, endpoint" is drawn out if you're just using the mouse but those commands can be made in one second on the left hand keyboard if it's done by memory.

WTF???? ...I just lost 6 hours of work after receiving this little message. Both my working and backup file decided to puke up the solids and flush them down the toilet. Did I mention the job is due this afternoon?

I am a small business right now. quote: As a business owner it is your job to keep your company postioned to turn a profit. I agree 100%...and profit is a reverse cost. How many hours of lost profit on package A would it take to justify the purchase of package B? Is the value returned on software maintenance justified if better ROI would be realized on something unrelated? Suddenly the sticker price on CAM and maintenance takes on new meaning.

Drew, I've been a loyal Mastercam user for 8 years now and, until I went out on my own, would've agreed with most comments here that support Mastercam exclusively. Now that I'm self employed though and every dollar spent relating to business operation can have extreme rewards and consequences (including the cash I've had to part with to buy Mastercam), I'd have to agree with you that... quote: If it works better than my current system, and can get my parts produced better, faster, and cheaper, I'll buy it...It sounds like shameless stupidity from someone who's used one system for so long but the hard truth is that my companies success comes ahead of my personal preference for any one kind of software. I have to admit that the maintenance program seriously undermined my confidence in CNC Software, not because they didn't eventually deliver on their promises but because I saw it as a money grab. The fact is I won't switch to a CAM software other than Mcam because I CAN'T...I'm in too deep to turn back now and have to recoup this investment before considering any alternatives. my 2c, steve

Big Buddah, welcome to the forum. Rotary axis output values are handled by the post processor so you may need to get some support from your reseller regarding your question. For example, a rotary toolpath that starts in the top view and rotates forward toward the front view can have rotary values for the start and end points in a multitude of variations depending on the post settings specific to your machine. 4 axis rotary toolpaths handled by a 5 axis post processor also require a fair amount of customization in the post. HTH, steve

yeah, my levels manager looks like leopard skin after installing X. Every second row has a gray background.

Oops, download = upload

I've downloaded a file to the ftp under the MC9 folder called "spiral offset finish.mc9" Iskander, how would you duplicate this toolpath using surface project blend. I gave it a shot and wasn't successful, thought you could show me something I might be missing.

DG, I agree with you about the effectiveness of scallop on circular parts with 3D surface shapes but my only problem with scallop has always been the stepover in the same location onto the next offset. Here's my workaround tip for the above situation if anyone cares to try: -create a 2D pocket spiral toolpath using a chain set to the edge of surface geometery. -project 2D toolpath onto surfaces. With a small stepover this approach creates great surface finishes AND eliminates any stepover dwell marks. HTH, steve

Lars, I dryran the program 1/2 hour after stopping it in cut...same machine and work offsets. I'll look into the cable issue, the machine is only 3 years old but it's been running nearly non-stop since it was purchased. Thanks for the tip. steve

Hey guys and gals, I provide contract programming for several local manufacturing companies and one of my customers has a HAAS VF-4 that I've been programming toolpaths on recently to cut some taper walled slots .100" wide by 1.26" deep (mould application). The nc program in question ran over all of last weekend cutting away fine until the last slot at which point the machine started creating motion beyond the programmed coordinates...essentially the X axis quit moving on an X,Y command creating a slot that has essentially gouged the part. I've checked and re-checked the program with no problems showing, dryran the same program again this morning and no problems. The customer wasn't particularily pleased to say the least but are being gracious in recognizing there was a machine issue over the weekend. This is a big customer and I'd like to find someone else out there who's run into a similar situation to clear the air of any doubt. So here's your chance to give me all the dirt on Haas controls. Honestly, I love 'em for their simplicity but it's no good if you can't trust the machine. cheers, steve mill3 v9 www.muvdesign.com

JeremyG, machining from surfaces gives you a solution to the shading issue and surfaces can also be "pre-colored" according to the cutting strategy to be used...makes life much easier when many faces are involved.

Can't wait to try it! I just finished a job this week making a topographic model with coons surfaces from a grid 38" x 68" overall and .300" grid spacing...took 12 hours of patching. This'll really help down the road. steve teh carpal tunneled

jbel, what's worked well for me in the past, depending on the pocket geometery, is to use a morph spiral toolpath: thread mill toolpath with very shallow pitch somewhere at pocket center to enter the material, create a small false island at entry point location and morph spiral the pocket chain and island using small stepover. Like Peter mentioned a deep axial and small radial cut works better than expected, and the feed can really be bumped up because the actual chip thickness is far smaller than taking a 50% radial cut...it sounds like you have the perfect machine to do it too. steve

skyking, if you've reverse posted the toolpath already, try backplotting and saving as geometery. Offset the geometery by the tool radius and that's about as close as you can get to restoring your geometery from nci or nc using Mastercam. HTH steve

Mike, no prob. I was under the gun and admitedly more than a little frustrated with this NC file fiasco. After banging my head against the desk a few times and some trial and error investigation I "fixed" the issue. Initially I was opening this file on my laptop and went through the process described above. When I opened this up on my desktop pc, the file would get hung up on the nci and then prompt wether the nci error should be sent to file or the default editor. The error stated the toolpath (surface finish contour) and that - one bad section was found. The toolpath in question was the first one in the operation group but looked clean when the file was opened. Instead, an extra dirty op showed up in the group called Merged NCI and the last 10 ops were also dirty. Deleting/re-doing the surface finish contour toolpath and regening the 10 dirty ops got me out my jam. Rich, I agree with you 100%..."unfortunately" the file is working fine again, now that the suspect toolpath has been deleted so I doubt CNC could investigate far with this one. I will give it a shot though. Thanks to those who attempted first-aid, steve

thanks Stone, I'll give it a try. steve

All the ops shared the same nci destination and produced an empty NC file on posting. The problem has nothing to do with knowing the nci destination or knowing where the nc file is going. The problem is: -there are 50 ops with the same nci destination that, when posted, create an NC file that contains nothing. -on re-opening the file, 10 of the 50 ops that appeared fine before are now dirty. -the 10 ops are regened, the entire group of 50 ops are re-posted and the NC file contains nothing. -the 10 suspect ops are seperated into a different group (with different nci destination) and the remaining 40 ops post out fine. -the 10 suspect operations create an empty NC file on posting...why???? Anyway, I may need to delete and re-toolpath on the 10 bad ones. That's life I guess.

After two hours of programming this morning I tried to post the operations and came up with a 0kbyte NC file. -restarted mcam, opened file, pop up says NCI has been allocated to a different directory and of the 50 or so operations, the last 10 are dirty. -regen, post and the NC file is empty. -posted operations that weren't dirty and the file comes out just fine. This isn't good, since this job needs finishing ASAP. I'm running the latest maintenance release (the cause?). Anyone else run into this before. steve

I experienced an instant MC shutdown this morning when trying to open a file that had several operations in the solid history tree greyed out below the "stop" portion of the tree. Normally I'd open a file like this and the greyed out ops would show up as dirty and moving the stop command would clear things up...MR0105 instantly shut MC down. Not even a shutdown warning. I would've been SOL if I didn't still have Design 9 SP1 on my computer which was able to open the file and clean up the solid history tree. steve

CNC Software has an opening available for a QC individual... ...could this be a sign of preparation for the inevitable flood of "issues" from releasing new software??? Is the release of X imminent??? Let the rumours begin