I've thought some more about your predicament and have some extra advice... Firstly, if you are experiencing too much abrasion and chaffing you might be going into the work from the wrong side. Try flipping it over and going in again gently. Remeber that in the words of a wise man... "theres always time for lubricant." In most cases try to avoid working on work pieces which are excessive in mass... Go looking for work which appeals to your tool and you will find the results more satisfying. If you do find yourself in situations when you only have the choice to do a larger one, take a possitive approach and use the opportunity to push your tool into the work from as many angles as you can, you might learn more about your tool. Occationally you might find yourself committed to larger work. In these situations you need to be careful about how you handle yourself. In these circumstances the work is often a little too soft, try to harden the work up a bit through regular cold working to avoid any tempered situations.

I stand corrected....

I think that most of us suffer when it comes to our tools and balls falling short of 12 inches... Just remember that the key to this is that if you are adept at using your tool, the length becomes far less important than the diameter. The balls themselves only need to be suffiently sized to get the job done in all cases. Additionally, remember that the tool will always benefit from a nicely lubricated workpeice and that rapid entry into dry work can have detrimental effects on tool life. Frequent servicing of the tool by skilled workers helps to keep them ready for action. Finding a good job for each tool is a common challenge, so offer your tool around as often as you can to build up interest. Remember that there are also many products out there that will help to maintain your tools rigidity. This is especially important if you plan to engage in long periods of plunging and probing. Niagra don't do any of these products themselves, but I am sure there is a sister company that does some well tested stuff... can't think of the name tho... Good luck!!!

The process that has been described to me is to make carbide parts and other complex components in a 'soft' state before the sintering. So with this process the carbide is pressed together, but not sintered so that it is not yet hard and still workable, then it can be machined... drilled, turned, milled or whatever... I found this http://www.allaboutcementedcarbide.com/03.html - where is a mention of soft machining between compaction and sintering.... regardless, I'm going to give up on this tangent, I'll stick to using Copper Tungsten for electrodes.... I just got facinated by the thought of using carbide to burn carbide....

I have just followed this link again and noticed this recommendation for SEDMing carbide "Use tungsten carbide for you electrode. You will most likely need to WEDM this, or you can machine it, but it is not so machinable." WEDMing carbide is straight forward enough, but I've had no experience machining it for electrodes.... hard carbide is practically impossible, but I asked around and some people are apparently using a mold to preform carbide into a shape from a powder form under pressure, then actually machining the carbide to accurate sizes before sintering.... I guess it would be like a super abrasive cast iron.... this was news to me, but I'm struggling to find any info about this process, or if it is real. Anybody ever heard of this before?

Hi and thanks for the advice. It seems to me the more I learn about this the more I realise how little I know... Another question, from looking around I've found the EROWA and System 3R systems. Are these the big 2 or are there others I havn't found yet? Does anyone think that there are advantages in one over the other? This seems like a major commitment to me, as much as a machine itself, because I need to tool up more than one machine for these systems to be effective....

Thanks guys, I've been in touch with the local guy who distributes the AGIE machines in Aust, and I am going to go and have a look at one soon. For the Mitsubishi machines I have called and left messages with a few Mitsubishi offices to find a distributor and I am waiting to see if anyone gets back to me. Like I said before I know very little about EDMing. Are you guys using Copper/tungsten or graphite for electrodes? We have only used CT becasue its clean to work with but we are getting horrible finishes in carbide. We are trying to burn a 1mm x 60° leadin / chamfer on a shaped hole in carbide but we typically only get 1 or 2 parts per electrode before we need to remachine it. We have tried all sorts of things on the machine but haven't improved this much, which is why we want to look at new machines.

thanks for the comment. what sorts of materials do you cut with it? One of our aims is to be cutting carbide with this machine and I'm not sure if this should be a factor in our machine choice....

HI all, I'm looking into the prospect of a new sinker / ram EDM machine. I don't rate my knowledge on these machines but at the moment the stand outs are: sodick? mitsubishi? makino? no particular order there... I'm looking for a quality machine which we can load up with parts and electrodes and let it run, so a toolchanger is essential. Currently we have a machine with automatic pecking, but only manual positioning and manual tool changing, so it really doesn't do much for us... thoughts? suggestions?

I don't use the capto hardware, so I can't comment on quality, but I recently got sent a link to an article saying that SECO has been bought out by Sandvik... if this is true perhaps the SECO stuff will improve... just a thought.

When I was a smoker, we could smoke at the machine in the workshop, the only rule was no butts in the swarf tray (cause it makes the coolant stink) and don't start any fires. I used to stand in front of a machine on a long cut and roll up my days worth... Anyway, we had a guy in the shop who complained and had the policy changed to outlaw smoking except on special breaks... he became a very unpopular person, but he was a tool anyway so it didn't really make a diference... Frankly, now that I've grown up, and quit, I'm glad smoking inside is not on... or else I would still be doing it Where I live, its illegal to smoke in any public indoor space such as cafes, bars, clubs, shops anywhere, except that there are special ventillated places built in many clubs where smokers can go. Its also been make illegal to smoke in a car if there are any minors in the vehicle at the time... I guess this is world trend...

Prod.... Nobody has any ideas? Anyone from @CNC have any thoughts?

I've had a bit more of a play (all above the waist!).. When you start a new file, go straigh into the operation manager for the machine group, then files you can see the path to the defaults file, which in my case is now a network location... 1st screenshot (MGP-files.bmp) Then if I edit the properties for the defaults by clicking the "!" button I have set the default stock setup to be a cylinder Ø50 x 80 mm.... 2nd screenshot (Defaults-Stock Setup.bmp) Save all this... Start a new file, so this should now reload the defaults (?), go straight into the operation manager for the machine group, then stock setup I can now see that the values for the cylinder I defined in the defaults have come accross but only the values, the shape hasn't.... so it has now given me a default box 50 (previously a dia.) x 80 x 0 mm cube.... 3rd screenshot (MGP-new stock setup.bmp) I put all three screenshots in a zip because together they are exceeding my quota... My real question here is am I doing this all wrong, or why isn't this working for me? Originally I was trying to edit operation 53 - stock definition, which I now know was all wrong.... but now I am editing what I think is right, only some of the values I make as default are working the way I think they should... screenshots.zip

Hi Brendan, I looked there, but those are the settings for the verify interface. I want to change the settings for the stock setup in the machine group properties dialogue..... sorry I didn't make that clear enough...

Hi, I am getting a weird problem where on just one PC for every new file / machine group, the default stock definition has changed from being rectangular to file, where it is then defaulting to a certain .stl file which was genenerated in verify ages ago. So every time we startup mastercam or start a new file, we end up looking at a top view of a half finished .stl from aways back. Clearly its not hard to go and change the stock definition, but this is irritating. So anyway, I had a look at this, and found that it only happens on one of our PCs, suggesting that there is a local change on that PC which is the cause. So now from what I can work out this setting is configured using the defaults setting in the control definition, which points to a file on the C:\ drive. Becasue we have mastercam installed on 3 PCs, and only 1 creates this problem, I figured I would copy a working MM_Mill.defaults-5 file from a working PC, and overwrite the bad one on the dud PC... this failed because our stupid IT guys have locked the folder so we all have read-only access so I can't overwrite the bad one.... (but I'm still at a lose as to why it would have changed if we can't write to the folder).... Anyway, because our IT people are slow to act to fix things, I thought "I can beat them!", so I copied a good file to a network drive, went into the control def manager and changed the setting in the 'files' tab for "default operations library (metric)" to point to the new file in the network location. I then went into the parameters for... operation defaults (where I can see the path is now pointing to the network location) ->Metric -> (operation) 53 Stock Model -> Parameters and I changed the setting to a cyclinder around the x axis, just so that I could see if the change worked..... saved. Closed Mastercam, reopened, and nothing... I still have the same problem on the bad computer, and on the new computers I still get a default rectangle.... so nothing is fixed. Am I screwing this up, or am I messing with the wrong setting?

Do you mean that you want an even chamfer all around the hole? If so I think you want to try a 3D contour tool path, or a normal 2D contour tool path with axis substitution if you have a 4th axis.

I havn't used one, but I have been considering it. I have our rep coming in the next week to talk about this and some other tools. We will probably get one to try out in tool steel, so in a little while I might be able to comment. I've used alot of seco tooling and I like it, so I'm expecting these to be good.

Using the contour toolpath you can run a spring pass with 2 or more finish passes (in mulitpasses) without spacing, so it will run thesame finish pass twice. Personally I like contour how it is. Its simple but works well and it very reliable. I'm guessing X2 doesn't have all of the dynamic 2d high speed toolpaths, but in there you have toolpaths like the dynamic contour, which has the ability to remachine a contour to remove the stock left over from a previous larger tool, which might be what you want. I don't use the pocket toolpath very often any more, but isn't there a checkbox or something to 'create separate finishing operation' or something like that? what does that do?

If you are using contour toolpaths you can right drag the roughing operation down in the operations manager, then choose 'copy after' whichs give you 2 identical operations, then you can go into the parameters for the second operation and change everything you want to for finishing, but most will be thesame. that way you are not going to need to rechain or resetup all of the duplicated data like the tool, linking parameters and all that. I'm assuming this works in X2, I jumped from V8 to X4 aways back, so I've never used X2

I subscribe to using control compensation.... Maybe the biggest reason I have never switched is because for in machine tool measuring for length the R value is used to move the tool sideways for length measurement. But one some controllers the added benefit of wear is that you can get errors when you are compensating inside of tight corners and the controller determines the tool wont fit inside the programmed path. When you are only compensating 0.01 mm or so this is way less likely to be a problem. I've only used wear once to get around this, and switched it back straight after the job to avoid angry confused looks from my workmates.... Personal choice I guess.

alternatively, you could add a tool break check between holes (or maybe every 5-10 or something)... Even if you had a load monitoring thingy that worked the drill would be stuffed when it triggered wouldn't it? Otherwise you would need to set the trigger value too low and you might have it go off for heaps of false possitives....? What is the material? What are you running into? I've done some jobs in cast steel, where I encountered hard pockets and inclusions in the castings as I went. My only way around many of them in the end was to keep changing tips and tools to get through the bad bits all the time, many of which I destroyed in the process. Every one of the broken tools got delivered to my boss as a reminder to scream and shout at the mob who did the castings and to look for someone else next time... sometimes when your in it up to your top lip, you need to know when to use a snorkel....

This is not an answer to your question. If you are frequently killing your drills you may just be over doing it with your feeds and speeds, what materials are you drilling? If you are drilling lots of holes and using the drills to the end of their life all the time you might be able to set a running time para in the tooltable of the machines which should stop cycles with a warning at tool changes. Heidenhain controls work that way.... If you are doing heaps of holes in a single setup put a full retract every 50th hole with a tool call to force the running time parra to update if you need to. This is a bad guess, but do do what you want, some controllers have a probing g code that monitors an input whilst in rapid to start points to prevent destroying the probe. Perhaps this can be used to monitor a different input. Or perhaps you could aim to temporarily lower the spindle torque alarm setting prior to drilling. I would suggest talking to the machine tool agent for the info.

I just had a thought.... would MCAM get the xxxxs if I change the config file to be read only? that way it can be read to load, but couldn't be randomly changed.... has anyone ever tried this? I work with a guy who complains to me just about every day that something in his config file has changed, or he makes a change and it doesn't stick 2 days later... it never happens to me, so I've always put it down to he plays with it too much (snicker!)... Maybe I'll try it, whats the worst thing that can happen.....

I totally agree. The countour toolpath is easily my most used. I try to chain the solid geo, but really its an exercise in not creating edge curves because I don't like the idea of using existing geo to create identical geo for chaining. 90% of the work I program is families of parts, with almost all features being thesame on every part, but each just has 1 or 2 different bits here or there, like a variable hole size. I get frustrated programming these parts because I want to be able to export the toolpaths from the first one, and then reassociate the geo for each subsequent one. Recreating all of the edge curves and containment boundaries is a pain in the ar$e so I try to avoid doing it. I guess I've always had the fantasy that one day I will be able to just use solid geo, export, import (or use a merge on a different level or something), then regenerate and let the CAM relocate all of the solid geo, which is mostly identical. I'm speaking out of turn here because I couldn't teach software how to do this myself, but in my mind it only seems like a short walk from where we are now. one of the only ways I've found to make this all easier is to remove chamfers and radii from the model, that way the geometry is more like what I want for toolpathing, plus its actually easier (a little) to put chamfers on crisp edges of model parts because you don't have to offset the path from the chain with leave stock on walls.... unless I'm just doing it wrong?

Hi, I've been making some parts recently needing large dia shallow concave "dishes" on the faces. We have been able to "face" them using a boring bar with a V or D shaped insert. the bar is unusual because the insert is tilted a little so that the centre line of the insert is at 45deg to the x and z axis creating equal cutting approach angles to the faces and diameters. with this tool we have been able to face the cavity out by starting at the OD with a face plunge then facing the stock away to the centreline and continuing to work it out. Most of our tooling is SECO, so you could hunt their website to see if you can find one.