MEYETTE be that the set-up sheets were R'EKD just like I said? And every one argued with me. Well guess what? They are still R'EKD. After inserting the required lines of code into our the custom .set file, the Z min depth, that is, the lowest negative value, is outputed way wrong on the set-up sheet. And all other patches were installed. So we are STILL using a .pst to output correct setup sheets. [ 05-05-2003, 05:07 PM: Message edited by: Aaron ]

quote: ... I'm sure if you took the time to sit down and ask nicelyI don’t recall asking anybody for anything in my last two posts. I was simply pointing out the fact that there are bugs and many users run into them. As a matter of fact I remember distinctly back in 2001 James Meyette implying that by saying, and this is not word for word, “we all know that MC can get cranky at times.” Furthermore, to refute rek’d, I have posted a question in which I did not receive an answer that solved the problem, no offense to the one individual that responded. quote: ....And we've all payed that same pretty penny my friend. And that changes what? quote: "In a manufacturing environment"...I think if you sit back and think about it for a second, MC is used so many users, for so many different aapplications, That, by definition, is a manufacturing environment. Many processes, many products, many ways to skin the cat. quote: I don't see how you could expect it to be delivered to you configured exactly how you need to use it. Read my post again Zero, I mentioned nothing about configurations and I was not complaining that MC was not set up for my specific application, I was defending a guy who got slammed for expressing frusturations and pointing out that MC has bugs. And from my experience it has more bugs than any other program I have used. That is not to say that I think Mastercam is crap, far from it, it has been effective in most of my applications over the years. quote: You have to remember that this is a USER forum. Made of users (yes I know it's been said a hundred times already) that don't get paid to come here, they do it because they want to help and be helped. Being an @&!(!%# isn't going to get you anywhere here. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that helping users meant being an @&!(!%# to them. I have read a lot of posts stating that same, idiotically obvious statement and so I must conclude that not being paid justifies inappropriate bashing. Because so far every one I have noticed say that is flaming someone. quote: Those that are mad at Mastercam because it's not taylored "just for them" are obviously used to having to be told exactally how to do something. If you want to be "told" how to make a part, maybe Gibbs is for you. Once again I made no complaints regarding how MC was tailored upon delivery. Let me quote myself to refresh your memories: quote: have been using MC since version 6 and have found it to be a decent CAM program and I prefer it over some other well known CNC software packages. And that includes Gibbs, Surfcam, Smartcam, Esprit (for wire) Are you sure you were responding to my post???? quote: Pitty those that can't use their mind and imagination in their job. What does that have to do with the price of rice in China?? Nice one-liner though rek'd. quote: You seemed to have somehow missed the ENTIRE point of many of the posts so far. Come in, ask a question, get some help, contribute. That's how it works. Once again, James, I have to ask myself who has been reading who’s posts. You are one of the worst ones here for flaming and ridiculing those who post contrary to your will or interpretation. If capitalizations are indicative of screaming online then I guess I have to take offense at much of what you have to say. I am not an idiot, I have been doing this for awhile and, like many of you, I have taught CNC and traditional machining at the college level. I take extreme offense to your belittling posts. I know for a fact that individuals have signed off from this forum permanently due to the demeaning responses that they have received. quote: I've been using Version 9.1 since Beta 1 and I've experienced stable results since day one with the exception of the V9.1 release. I rest my case. quote: Are you sure you're using Mastercam? Gee, I don’t know James, maybe I should check again! quote: don't know what planet you're from but you need to came back down to earth pal. NO SOFTWARE is bug free. No matter how much or how little you pay for it. Is that acceptable? No. Should we expect every release to get better? Duh! Are bugs and issues a reality for EVERY software developer? Youbetcha. Don't like it? Write your own software or buy something else but one word of caution, "You'll be back" because for as many issues as Mastercam has al the others have at least as many. They may be different issues but they are issues nontheless. What planet I'm from?!?!?! That was cute, nice one James. I'll say it again, that does not change the expectations of a customer: reliable software. Would you drive a new car that, every now and then, quits on the side of the road? How about a rifle that occasionally discharges on its own because of a design error? Don’t like it? Build your own car, build your own firearms. What happened to 110%? Should we lower our expectations simply because nothing is error free?!?!? Come on people this is manufacturing, quality assurance and continuous improvement are the name of the game, design flaws are not acceptable. That has to be our philosophy or nothing improves. I realize that it takes time to work the bugs out of a product, I also know how far we have come in the machining arena in the last 30 years; because of CAM software one can be a CNC programmer now and not have a clue what a G&M code is or know the meaning and uses of “cosine” or “tangent”, but should we slam every one who complains about those bugs? Apparently, that has been your philosophy. With regards to your last jibe, again I was speaking strictly about bugs, not “new features”. I am aware of and use the new features that I need for our application.

cadcam, I didn't notice you bashing anyone and your initial reply to robk seemed amicable enough. But the way some of these guys shoot from the hip when responding makes one seriously reconsider using this forum for the headache that can be had when some self righteous you-know-what bashes or ridicules you because of inadvertent poor sentence structure or voicing a frustration with MC glitches. I too had to uninstall 9.1 and reinstall 9.0 sp1 because of glitches that I didn't have time to address. One of the most irritating bugs being the set-up sheets. Even with the MP_v912.ZIP download that is supposed to fix it, the set-up sheet still posts each individual remachining chain as a seperate operation, resulting in long, redundant set-up sheets. I have been using MC since version 6 and have found it to be a decent CAM program and I prefer it over some other well known CNC software packages. However, it still crashes, spectacularly I might add, more than any other program loaded on my computer or that I have ever used and has since I started using version 6 and on any computer configuration that I have used, including this one, which is built based on MC recomendations. Moreover, there are certain issues I have with the software, i.e. regenerating remachining from a contour operation will cause MC to crash a large percentage of the time after freezing up for 5 minutes or so, but it won't do that during a regeneration of pocket remachining operations. I don't care what anybody says, we've paid a pretty penny for MC software and by rights I should be able to expect practically flawless operation. In a manufacturing environment quality assurance and continuous product improvement are the norm. Our customers expect accuracy and dependability, and in this ISO 9003/JIT manufacturing world, we expect accuracy and dependability from our tool and material suppliers, including Mastercam. Anything less, based on current manufacturing principles, is unacceptable, no excuses. And that, fellow liscensed mc users, precludes bashing another liscensed user because said user is frusterated due to malfunctioning software. Time fiddling around trying to get something to work is downtime, unproductive, and tends cause the boss to pay more attention to you than is desirable. According to FAQ: quote: The model for this Forum is users helping users.

quote: As I only open files in the order of 2 or 3 times a day, then these two lost minutes of my life are really opportunities to reflect on the job I am about to complete. What a Luxury, thanks CNC Software... Any increase in the time it takes to program a part is ultimately a decrease in the bottom line. Wow!!! I've sure lost some respect for a few "senior" members in here. Some are just jerks, others are jerks that can't spell. I wonder if these guys wear ties??

Anyone know how to keep the operations manager window from randomly resizing?? aaron

We import text from Autocad as is and then break it apart with Modify-Break-Draft/Line

To any of you post code gurus out there. I am trying to modify the mill.set file so that it will output exactly which post processor got used by MC to generate the G-code. I think what I need is the character string that maps to the lower left corner of the Job Set-up window that lists the Post that is (was) being used. My current code looks like this (keep in mind that I have not done this before): ppostname #Post Program Used ??something here to define ppostname?? pmachtyp #Output Machine Type if ppostname, [ if ppostname = "MPMASTER_TAKUMI", "TAKUMI", e if ppostname = "MPMASTER_FADAL", "FADAL", e if ppostname = "MPMASTER_OKUMA", "OKUMA", e #if mi1 = 1, #Takumi Indicator #"TAKUMI", e #if mi2 = 2, #Fadal Indicator #"FADAL", e #if mi1 = 3, # Okuma Indicator ] . . . "Machine: ", pmachtyp, e #Machine Type in Header As you can see I was using a different approach by directing the set up sheet to look at the misc. integer values. It works, however I want the setup sheet to tell me what Post got used, not which one I think I used . I think that I need to define the variable "ppostname" to grab the post that was used from the job setup. Any suggestions or tips??? Or am I trying to see the chicken before the egg? Thanks in advance. -aaron-

At the community college I used to teach cnc at we had two 1991 Haas VF0 VMC, which was not their best year. However, those two machines went through some beatiful crashes on a regular basis by student programmers and they kept on going and going. -aaron-

Wow!! Thanks for all the information. That definitely gives us more than a starting point. What we are cutting are wave solder pallets for silver soldering PCB components. Ti may be used over our standard material for thin wall section strength. Thanks Again. -Aaron-

Does anyone have any experience milling Titanium plate? I am looking for info regarding Ti's tendancy to warp due to work hardening. Also suggestions for speed/feed rates and tooling- coated Carbide, CBN, or PCD? Do the values given in the Machinery's Handbook work well? Thanks in advance. -Aaron-

OlympiaHS On Fanuc Robocut Wire EDMs (and I would imagine other Fanuc controllers) there are soft limits that can be set from within the controller. I don't know if Mastercam can set or activate/deactivate these or not. Check the controller operations manual to set soft limits from the controller. -AW-

Dan, Because we change project directories so much we use "setdirs" rather than changing directories in mc configuration. The drawback is that it needs to be re-ran if MC is shut down or crashes. Recently I have selected it it as a default c-hook upon start up for that very reason. The other one We use alot is "align" for aligning text. The one I have found to be pretty worthless is "animate", mabey I am not using it right but it doesn't work very well and deletes all geometry upon completion. -AW-

RMVATS, Alt-P will turn off the prompt area. I'm not sure how to relocate it. -AW-

oops, continuing. Each Toolpath group has to be selected as the active group when you are working in that toolpaths WCS. right click on the desired toolpath in the operations window, select "groups" and select "set as active group" the toolpath group name will now be in bold font. Each tool path group can be posted individually (and with different posts if you are using different machines for the same part). As a side note, toolpath groups, tool paths, parameters, tools, and geometry can be dragged and dropped into any other of the same type. Hope this helps. Aaron

Al, I don't know if this helps but you can set up multiple toolpath groups (and rename them) and assign a WCS to each group within the same MC file. From the main menu: Toolpaths-Operations, right click on "toolpath group" and select "groups" from the menu. That menu has different tools to manipulate toolpath groups. For each individual toolpath group use the right click menu and select "options" then "edit common parameters" This will bring up a generic tool parameter window. Select the T/C plan button and for both Tplane and Cplane select the appropriate WCS for that toolpath group. Also you will need to give an NCI name and file destination to each toolpath group. Again using the right click menu for the toolpath groups. Select "options" and then "change NCI destination". Give it a name and save it.