I'm sure you've gone down this road, but I'll program everything in incremental. Move to a diff machine and bump model up or down and regen.

Something other than Mazak and Okuma's being supported in MT...

Sure MT is it's own deal. (James you prolly want Omnitturns and Ganesh's bulit, right?) :D

But as far as regular lathe, people rip on it all the time, but frankly I'm not sure why. Sure it's old, but has been updated and what does it need to do that it doesn't now? (pinch turn, etc is a MT product alone)

It needs a major, major overhaul to bring it up to speed.

Like?....

Anyone can just call Sandvik, the main Sandvik Coromant phone number, tell whoever answers the phone you want to recycle some carbide. Send it in the $5.50 FLAT RATE! usps box. I recall over 40lbs will fit. (And now why is the usps flat broke? Cause jerks like me. )

I recall about 11$ a pound several months ago? Could be wrong on that.

What'd you use for tool axis control?

When I'm running a 5x 3+2 part, I usually program a .010 spot drill or something on top/back/right/left, just to check that the part is on the machine the same location as mastercam. Anyone else got any location validation tricks?

Two toolpaths support undercuts:

Surface fin (or rough) contour.

Flowline.

edit whoops sorry someone said the above ^^^^

Contour is generally my pref, you can get fantastic lead in/out with each z pass.

omfg electrical work $$$$$$$. Back in 06' when we built our shop from the ground up, quotes on transformers were good for 24hrs. Metal price volatility.

Dam Obama.

Hexagon will bend-you-over-the-barrel for anything and everything. NOT recommended in my book. I maybe be biased but with Verisurf there is something to be said for relatively easy of use and consistency with Mastercam. I'm not sure about what their status of cmm programability is, like Ron says.

I certainly am NO expert, but do have some recent experience. We just had two old B&S manual's rebuilt and retrofitted, just to have something operational.. CMM Systems did the work, and I can say was one of the best repair and support companies I've worked with. HIGHLY recommended. (Years ago Hexagon did something similar, charged us 4 x more and never really got things working repeatably)

Bob, I'll send you an email with some info.

I did a major project at a company setting up sharing everything on a network, but also having transportable configs, .kmps, mtb, and network stored individual user data folders. Basically anyone could sit down at any pc and pull up their config and see their own shared folder, yet all pull mmd's etc from network. This is the way they wanted it, but it was alot of work and diligence.

Turns out the registry trumps all settings you make in configs and other file pointers. Kinda frustrating. I had to do alot of reg editing, config editing in a text editor, and communication with qc, (incidentally are great folks )

To start with, now with X7 the shared mcam-7 folder can be installed on a network drive. The absolute best way to do it is upon initial virgin install of mastercam on each "client" pc, set as a network install. That way all registry keys for every user are written as shared. If you do local installs and decided to switch to network shared later, regediting is needed for each user shared path......

If you do want this type of environment, I've got a fair amount of notes and other info I can share if you'd like. PM me offline if you'd like.

I'm not sure what is going to happen to the house of cards when we update to the next version.

For $45k you can run circles around most commodity machines.

LINK

A bit of advertising, but this is an incredible value to be had. It was at auction yesterday and didn't meet the minimum. Small town local auction house really has limited reach, and brand isn't well known.

I personally spec'd and purchased this machine back in 07. I programmed and ran until 09'. I will personally attest this is a very good machine and want it to go to a good home. I have no financial interest.

YCM NSV-102A

CAT 40 Big Plus

12k spindle w ceramic bearings and chiller

Box & Roller ways 40 x 20 travels

MXP200 control (18i with AI Nano G5.1 Q1 thru Q5)

All fanuc drives and motors

Tool probe (length only)

Rapids I recall 1900ipm

30 tool side mount changer.

Conveyor, skimmer, etc.

4th axis wired (The Nikken sold for 1800$ at the auction!)

15,000 lbs

$ 45k to pay the bank note.

If I recall was about $120k new.

It will be gone (bank) Monday afternoon. Anyone pm me if you'd like more pictures or possible video. This will cut steel at the same feed as a haas will cut aluminum.

Spaceclaim can do absolute wonders for bad models. (Hey that's a good line to give management "it can do wonders"). Super fast for capping surfaces, repairing just about any and all model errors, gaps, inexact edges, holes, etc. Can change/modify/fix extremely complex fillets and rounds. There is a c-hook that seamlessly sends a file back and forth between spaceclaim and mastercam.

Get in touch with your dealer and have them give you a demo, based on your workflow and day-to-day needs. Send them one of your worst files and see what they can do. You'll probably see something that took you 5 hrs done in about 2 minutes.

m2c

Thx for chiming in Rich, appreciate the acknowledgement.

.

. I'd be interested to know more about how you are using this field but we can take that offline if you want to PM me. I might be able to suggest an alternative.

Well if a manufacturer is not in the drop down list, I'd like to be able to manually enter the name. eg. Hanita is not in the list, so I'd just like to type it in.

Yes the 390 has been a staple for so long, it's hard to convince to go to solid carbide...but man does it work in most applications. Numbers and videos prove it!

I've been thinking of adding video links to the dynamic milling database. People would see the data fields, and then video of the cutting. Could be pretty cool.

Any ideas where to put videos and how to manage? (other than youtube I suppose)

I agree and have also requested.

If you don't mind Jack, put the numbers into the database (in signature below). People have been back on entering info. Thx Ron for the recent additions.

Sure, just have rotary axis output page set to Y. (use C-view utility to set planes for easiness)

In all honesty, the seat of my pants and doing it a lot. I've followed manufactures feed & speed calculators to the tee, even the fancy Sandvik calculators that are stand-alone programs, and invariably find running beyond their high end numbers with no diminished tool life . Sometimes well beyond their numbers. Tougher/harder more specialized materials I will be close to their numbers, but above A36, 1018, 1045, even A2, etc and every flavor of aluminum. (Aluminum has no surface footage limitation). I attribute it to the low radial stepover. With a 10% stepover, 90% of the tool is out of the cut and cooling. The heat generated in the tool is nowhere near a traditional 40-100% stepover, which is where a lot of the sfm calculators come from.

So yes it may be a bit shade-tree sounding...But doing, hearing, seeing, smelling, and feeling go a long way.

I get a fair amount of demo tools and occasional can't even break them when trying. AS long as it's programmed correctly to not mechanically overload the tool. (stepover, entry, rounding rad, etc)

I've run lots of dynamic paths with all sorts of tools; from 250$ Sandvik Plura's to 50$ Garr's. Quality tools you can run over 500ipm at at 800sfm. Value-priced tools you can't get that performance, but can still run circles around traditional large tools / slow feedrate toolpaths. (IMCO power-feeds aren't much more than garr's these days and run very well).

A few things to think about-

You could very well make way more money with a high-performace tool. Provided you have a good production part, and a good machine and holder that can run it. You gotta run some numbers and some testing to eek the performance out, but a 5x more expensive tool could make a part 10x cheaper through cycle time and machine utilization alone. Thats IF you run the machine fast enough to use the tool.

Ok back to your question.. with a regular 4 flute garr, 1" doc, 10% stepover. 3500rpm (430 sfm). 100 ipm to start with, increase feed as fast as your machine/holder/part will take. It's not the feed that is going to kill the tool. Don't be afraid to turn it way up. I wouldn't be suprised at all if 150 ipm works. Cheaper cutters don't seem to have good core-thickness/grind, so you will see some flex. Since you don't have a coating, keeping the stepover low will keep the heat at the cut down. Coated tool you could handle more heat at the cut and probably increase stepover. No coolant. Heat will be in chips and not part. Air blast works well.

For a little at-the-machine tuning, watch the chips very closely as they come off the cut. Should start silver, and then by the time they land should be blue/tan. If they are blue too soon, your rpm is too high. If they stay silver, turn up the rpm a bit. Whatever you come up with for rpm, feedrate is always as fast as your setup will take. It's speed not feed that kills.

If you need a finished floor: leave .025, and copy the toolpath. Then set stepover to 40% and leave 0.

Let us know how she runs.

If you use machine sim, (which is well worth it) on the post page at the bottom is rapid rate move. Uncheck the move increment .1 and it should work. I use that for a horizontal and it solves the artificial collisions.

Sorry I have no answers. I'd just call Haas direct and speak with their support.

Did you get a simulator also?

What difference does "a lot of operations" make if you are able to machine it faster?

All depends! Never think in absolutes.

If you're running one part and will never see it again, 5 inefficient ops take a lot less time to program than a 100 op perfect program. Undoubted will take longer on the machine, but net gain if you saved in the sum of program and run time, and have machine time over programmer time available.

I've programmed one-off parts so quickly, but so safe, so slow so "inefficient looking", yet could run lights out with no doubt. Sure machine wear, electricity cost, but you can get nearly free run time with a guaranteed good part where otherwise the machine would have sat waiting for a nicer quicker faster pretty program.

That said, I've also spent days programming just to shave seconds off a program. With 500,000 part runs that is justifiably time well spent. .

all depends.

Can you upload the file? If not I have something similar I can dig up.

Yes agreed on all the above. No question I would cut it differently. I've long been on the forefront of dynamic milling techniques, tooling, machines, etc. and don't want to get into that aspect.

My question, period, is about the software output. Why does helix not output? I've run into this before and figured now is a good a time as any to investigate.