G-Wizard Editor/Simulator can be installed on a Mac or PC. It's still in Beta test, so not complete, but it is free and a lot of people are using it. Best, Bob Warfield

Are you climb milling? Consider trying a conventional pass just to see if it helps. Climb milling tends to deflect the tool into the wall of the cut. Conventional tends to deflect along the toolpath. There's a diagram showing these deflections on my tool deflection page here: http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCCNCMillFeedsSpeedsDeflect.htm Cheers, BW

Thanks for the great forum! I gave a callout for eMastercam over on my blog, CNCCookbook: http://www.cnccookbook.com/index.htm Of course we get a lot of Mastercam users over there. I also really appreciate the Dynamic Milling Database you're building. I used it to do a little fine tuning on the final release of our HSM speeds and feeds calculator. We were pretty close on chiploads, but you guys were pushing the SFM quite a bit harder. Best Regards, Bob Warfield

You may be work hardening if you let the chipload get too low because the tool will start to rub. Micro-milling is hard. The geometry at those scales and the shearing behavior is different, so normal speeds and feeds formulas are wrong. In addition, as was mentioned, even a little runout is a big % of the cutter diameter and hence will break cutters. FWIW, G-Wizard has micro-milling feeds and speeds models based on how Makino approaches the problem and would call for as much as 4 IPM for a slot, 0.003" deep @ 4000 rpm on 0.015" EM. Several of our users are in the watchmaking world and have said they're getting good results with it. That feedrate gives a chipload of 0.0003". If you drop down 0.5 IPM your chipload drops all the way down to 0.00003". That ought to make the tool start rubbing. Cheers, BW www.cnccookbook.com

Whatever method you use to backup, be sure to test restoration on a semi-frequent basis. IT guys will tell you lots of horror stories of backing up and then discovering when they really needed it, they couldn't restore. This was a problem for Mozy some years ago (I'm sure they've fixed it!) and I wrote about it: http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/23/congratulations-mozy-guys-youre-rich-now-where-the-is-my-data/ These days I use a Seagate Black Armor NAS to backup our computers, and then I back up the NAS to Amazon S3. Having lost a hard disk, found the backup defective, and having sent the hard disk to a clean room to be recovered (they got back everything of value for $$$, but it was impressive), you can't be too careful with your data! Cheers, BW www.cnccookbook.com PS The Black Armor is so compact, I have thought it would be cool to bury it in a capsule away from the house with just a power and Ethernet connection. A little waterproof container, a little ventilation, and it would be your own little data vault! LOL