Too many variables to give you an answer, but maybe some ideas. Everything that Colin said for starters. One thing that I've done that is helpful is draw a floor plan, then draw the travel of a job through the shop. Draw the travel of material. Draw the travel of people around shop to their tasks (machines, inspection, toolcrib, etc. etc.). Draw the travel of chip bins, shipping, receiving, etc etc etc. You will have to weight what's most important, but it will give you more information to make your decision. Another idea is video tape a day in the shop, and watch the flow of things. Easy to see wasted motion, inefficiencies, and hassles that could be eliminated. Also helps to garner some opinion from shop floor personnel. They may point out unforeseen pitfalls of any plan. m2c

I just tried default CY lathe and first op gave 114. second -114.

A twist on this that I can't seem to figure out. I want it to: START at Z-.7, .050 peck, 1. full retract, rapid down to .02 above previous peck etc. O0000 G20 (TOOL - 3 OFFSET - 3) (DRILL .75 DIA. 67 DEGREE ANGLE) G0 T0303 G97 S700 M03 G0 G54 X0. Z1. Z-.68 G99 G1 Z-.73 F.001 G0 Z-.68 Z-.72 G1 Z-.78 G0 Z-.68 Z-.77 G1 Z-.83 G0 Z-.68 It works perfectly fine if the hole starts at Z0. Seems if it used clearance at every pass like mill does, it should work? Use stock totally does not work. (I have stock drawn correctly with pre-hole). G74 is disabled in control def. I've tried a ton of combinations of depths and am stumped.

I recently help a very large shop move to the network shared, and it solves all of those problems you list. They love it. We also have their user folders on the network so any programer can sit down at any pc and have their stuff. That took a bit more careful work to set up, but works well.

Something to consider, probably easiest when you install X8, is put the shared directory on the server. Not only share tool libraries, but machine defs & posts, operations, defaults, machine simulators, etc.

the icon. click on the thumbnail below hth

Actually Al is further up the table than steel. It would go first. Regardless if you don't oil the table very well you'll get rust regardless.

To me it looks like a gap move. The tool is repostioning itself between cutting moves (which is considered a "gap"). You will get some sort of reposition move at the edges, looks like you have "follow surface" and a large gap value in there. A smaller value and the tool will retract or something. Sorry don't have a real answer though, just an explanation. Yes it's an awesome path though.

Master subplates for every machine I help setup. T-slots are a hassle and time waster. For lasting plates I get A36 burned, stress-releaved, then double-disk ground. Hard, stable, strong. Create durable reamed and threaded holes no problem. For lighter duty and arguably more hassle, mic-6 or k-100, then buy all sorts of threaded inserts and receivers to make them work. I will use AL for the on/off "pallets" because of operator weight savings, but I prefer steel for the main.

I always leave the system planes and create my own and name them logically (at least what I think is logical ) "Side 1, Side 2, Side 3 Deep Hole Drilling, etc etc". I use wcs =t/c fine for plane shift jobs. The only buttons I need are plane manager, ='s, and gview-top. But for any kind of multi axis leave wcs at system top and use t plane. Then named planes and givew=t plane icon. I drive everything from plane manager. It gives you all the information about your entire file and allows me to keep an eye on things.

Could you just use named planes flyout in the WCS bar (at bottom of screen)? Or quicker throw a named wcs icon up there. Moving origin for system views started in x5 I think. It created some catastrophes with incorrect usage. It is back to being being "unallowed", which I think is a good decision.

There recently was a long post about laptops. In a nutshell I've been very happy with Sager's computers, customer service, and general business practice.

Yes, and love it. So much so I've got several. Desktop, office, travel, classroom station.

Haas and Okuma currently at my disposal. Run all sorts of stuff though.

Your filter is on? Can you reshoot that screen shot and have points displayed too? I'm curious. Also, that first pass offset and feed reduction is a great add-on. It still will over-engage when morphing 90 deg corners, but this helps with some of it. I like to experiment and push the f&s to the limits, and the first pass was always the limit.

The kinematics on the machine look pretty good. I believe there is a debug screen that will show the actual feedrate. (Parameter lock off, Alarm page, and type "debug". I too would go towards crazy's method. 150% stepdown, 15% stepover, 20% rounding radius, as fast as machine will feed. Take a look at my spreadsheet in the link for some ideas. Run some MRR calculations and see what method gives you what.

I hear ya Bob, seeing and hearing things like that just kill me. But your right, some people are just happy doin' what they do.....But some of us (here) live to push the edge and see the possibility of continual improvement. In my (advanced) classes everyone is pretty surprised when I say use feed override until stuff breaks. $andvik tools, and we easily go over 600+ipm in steel. Frequently I surprise myself how far it can be pushed. I tell my students go tell your boss what you just saw, and tell them you know how to program it. Also tell them they are competing against shops running this kind of tooling and technology. Eh, preaching to the choir here fellas

Ok I figured it out: I had the same session of x7 open for a few hrs. (Yes had run ram saver many many times). A setup sheet progressively took longer and longer. Closed and re-opened and back to about 10 seconds for 30 operations. Must be some sort of cache thing? I'll ask cnc and post back.

That is a great read. Thx for sharing. I tell people proud of using 10 yr old cam software, if they have to compete with a modern shop they are done.

It takes like 5 min to generate a simple active report all of the sudden. I'm using a custom report that has worked fine the other day...ideas? Just a few drilling and contour ops.

Then it sounds like a machine issue. The code isn't going to change machine dynamics. Have you experimented with the machine corner rounding and accuracy settings? (I can't recall what the par #'s are). That certainly controls code/motion.

No, they both will work fine. I have them on my laptop.

Heck, give the Sager guys a call and see what they have to say. They'll be straight up.

I know I know James, I'm always one for performance over convenience; but the 17" Sagers are huge. Big, thick, heavy and meaty. It was marginally portable, barely fit in the biggest laptop bag, and must have weighed 25lbs. .The power supply is the size of a brick. Literally the size of a brick. I'm not exaggerating. It was almost a joke. I used one for a month, sent it back for a 15.5", no questions asked. That was about 18 months ago. Maybe they have a better form factor now for the 17"s, but it was unusable on an airplane. Didn't fit on the tray (I fly coach, not 1rst class James ) Plus I need room on my tray for a few cocktails. It's apparent that Sager saves $$ by not using the slickest designed components, but puts the $$ into quality hardware, thus the clunky-ness of things but overall great performance. I had a 17" Sony, and it was nicely designed, big yet portable. However the whole computer turned into a brick after a year, and service was incompetent. Seems most corporate folks go dell for IT management sake and life-cycle replacement schedules, which makes sense. Dell knows they have a captive customer and price accordingly. If you're spending your own $$$, you'll get way more for way less with a sager...I also feel good about supporting an excellent small company that deserves it. more m2c

http://www.sagernotebook.com/ These guys will build you exactly what you want, with no unneeded crap, and be extremely great at support and customer service. You can call them on the phone. They are in Cali. Someone will answer in two or three rings. That person will generally know technical, service, and sales info. Wow. quadro card, 32gb ram, and whatever combo of ssd (raid or non-raid) you can get from them custom built for well less than a dell. . Also they come with a super clean windows build, and none whatsoever bloatware. oh, the 17" models are monster huge. I'd recommend 15" ish. No I'm not on their payroll, I've just gone through laptops of just about every major brandname, and they are far superior in building exactly what I want (and nothing else) and supporting it. If you're not familar with the company and curious how they obtain parts in relation to the big brands (dell, hp, etc). http://en.wikipedia....ebook_Computers m2c