Thanks for the info John. I can't help but think Mastercam may look to acquire all resellers in the future. Or at least the US ones. How many are there in the US? Did they acquire MACDAC too? I know for years MACDAC answered their phones as if they were Mastercam. That was under the OG management though so maybe it's different today. Pete

Interesting!!! As a former employee of Services Four Automation, which was sold to Cimquest, I can't help but wonder. What happens to Cimquest employees? SFA's founder, Steve B. was made an employee of Cimquest when it was bought. Will ALL Cimquest employees be welcomed into the Mastercam fold? Are they just changing the name on the face on the building?

Hey John, Yeah it's been AGES!! Oh well that's what happens when you're having fun. Life is good down here in Southeast Louisiana Love it down here. And not just for Bourbon Street. There is SOOOO much more to New Orleans than the tourist trap area. Work on the other hand...

Hey Y'all. Haven't posted in what seems like forever so here goes. At Laitram Machine Shop, I learned how to use CAMPlete for posting and verifying programs for the Matsuura 5-axis equipment. A couple of years later we decided to ditch CAMPlete as it was recently purchased by Autodesk and we couldn't update for some reason. We started using Vericut and I really feel it's much more user-friendly, and more accurate verification of the NC code. I generally always use Mastercam Backplot and Simulation to get a quick idea of what should happen, especially for simpler programs, but nothing beats Vericut for horizontal or 5 axis output. My .02 cents for what it's worth. HTH Pete

Tyler, Thanks for the great info. I'm looking forward to playing with this new toy. I have to commend Karlo on a job well done. It certainly looks impressive. When I went into it and used the solid models for the TR160 as a fixture, it placed them on top of the existing trunnion geometry of the generic VMCTTAB. I'll keep messing with it. Should be up and running in no time.

Ok, so I have the Haas VMC models from the FTP site here and the TR160 models supplied to me by Bob Wolcott from another thread. How does one place them into Machine Simulation. I clicked on Help in Machine Simulation and it shows how to build a new machine but the icons aren't in the toolbar for MCX-6. Do I edit the .xml file of the generic VMCTTAB machine I've been selecting? Will it allow me to cut and paste the path name for the .STL file location or will I have to type it in? Anyone create a new machine in Machine Simulation who can help with this? TIA

robk, How's it goin' Dude? Haven't seen you since Eastec too long ago. What's new?

Thad, Yeah it's been a while. I lost my old login info. a few years ago and when it switched to the new format I was out of touch. Then last year I noticed we could use our FB profile to login so that's how I do it. I asked Webby if they could attach all my old posting history and member status stuff to the new login but what shows now is the best they could do. They do at least show an accurate post count. I was away for a few years so my post number would've been much higher had I stayed active. Oh well, priorities I guess. Plus I was running machines more than programming or spending a lot of time in front of the PC. I still can't spend as much time on the forum as I did when at S4A. Ah the early days. I remember them fondly. Especially whenever a certain banned POS was stirrin' up the post pot.

Thad, What that Loser?!! I wouldn't be caught dead mistaken for him. "I like you but you're crazy." J/K Yuuup. That's me. Peter Scott, formerly of S4A, which is now Cimquest.

Rotary, Maybe. Anything's possible. We'll only know for sure if and when he returns. Bob, Thanks for the Step file. It looks great. Now I just have to figure out exactly how to import the assembly into Machine Simulation to work with it. I'll figure it out. Having the file is a big step in the right direction. No pun intended.

I guess we scared him off Rotary. Or maybe I scared him off when I posted the Red Sox link. My bad. Come back to us yankboys59. I was only jokin' with ya. All in good fun.

Bob, That's fantastic! I wish there were more professional sports players who got into machining like you did. We would all be in much better shape in this country if there were. More young people would get interested in this dynamic field if their sports heroes did it. The Machine Simulation will accept STL geometry. My e-mail is [email protected]. Thank you very much for the CAD files. My boss will be pleased. I might even get to come on this website more frequently because of your generosity.

Bob, I think it's a shame that Baseball has become such a business. Like all professional sports, it has become overpriced for the average American family to go and enjoy a game even just once a season. That's because of the high salaries from agents who make these deals with the owners so they can make their cut based on the talent of the player and what may be expected of that player to do. The owners made huge amounts of money. Most before they owned a pro ball team. Wouldn't it be nice if Shops had the same type of system as talent agents with pro ball players? We place too much power, money and admiration into the hands of players who don't produce anything that can benefit the financial situation for the whole country. We are entertained by them but nothing more. Fans fight over which team or player is better. Who fights for which shop makes better parts? Are there Manufacturing cards? Baseball cards can make lots of money for those who collect them. Where are the priorities in this country? We all gripe about the current financial situation but how did we get in such bad shape? By not concentrating on what made us great to begin with. We were the number one manufacturing country in the world after WW2. That's why our economy strengthened. Not because of pro ball players. I'm only resentful that they make so much money to play a sport. It's a distraction from what's really important. At this point for the sake of our country's economic stability we need to get back to the level of strength of 60 years ago. That way our kids will have a future where they can enjoy a good baseball game maybe several times in a season instead of once if they're lucky. On another note Bob, we have the exact same trunnion but on a VM2. Would you happen to have a solid or surface model of the trunnion that can be used in the Machine Simulation? It's something my boss has asked me to find and I can't get any models from Haas. Just curious. I like the parts you're making though. Especially the Porsche magnesium intake. Do you find it easier to run dry with air blast on the Porsche head?

Yeah that always p!$$ed me off too about professional athletes. Really? You're going to bitch that you ONLY make $20M for 4 years to play a game? I'd do what they do for 1% of their pay and be frakkin' happy as a pig in $#!+. I wouldn't be as good as any of them because I'm too old but it would still be entertaining. Pro athletes should be required to swap jobs for at least a week with one of us "Lumpa's" so they can appreciate what they have. Substitute "underpaid, unappreciated, hard-working, waitin' for the weekend, common guy" for Lumpa in the previous sentence.

Heavy, You could also just set the Toolpath Parameters to not output helixes. Use the Linearization Tolerance to force any helixes to be broken by a specific xy or z deviation. This Lin. Tol. can most often be found in the Cut Parameters tab. Max Depth Variance is a similar tolerance for breaking 3D toolpath into small line moves. If either of these are "greyed out" it's because there isn't any helix or 3D toolpath present. HTH

Rotary Ninja, Not surprising since you are in Indianapolis. Are there any major league teams near you? Personally I feel it's tough to watch a game on TV but it's too expensive to take kids to the game unless you go to a minor league game. The major league parks are becoming more about corporate impression sessions. If you want to hire someone and get them to really like the city/area take them to a major league game.

yankboys59, How about this one? http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/images/masthead/y2011/clubs/logos/bos.png Oops. Wrong team.

Kyle, Thanks for the info. We also have a Haas Trunion here and that sounds like just what we've been looking for. I figured it had to be done the way kool described in the top of this topic. You learn something new every day.

gcode, I agree with you that it seems like eyecandy when all you really need is the code. It's easy enough to make a Threadmill toolpath in Mcam without having a "proper" tool definition. That's not the question however. Mastercam's never had a good, user friendly method for tool definition. The tool libraries that are provided are outdated and threadmills have been around for as long as CAM software has been. What are they waiting for? X10? The tool libraries and the methods for defining tools that are not found in any standard library need to be completely redone. High speed machining, feature based toolpaths and such are great concepts and move the software forward. Neglecting the fundamental tool definitions of common tools we all use on a daily basis is a major oversight. We're still using the same tool libraries from V7. This needs to change now. It's becoming an embarassment, or should be, that the #1 CAM software in the business is so far behind in basic tool definition. We all know if you have the correct tooling, making good parts is easier than when you don't have the right tools. Mastercam is a great tool that needs improvement in this fundamental area. It's been ignored for far too long. The question wasn't "how do you produce code for threadmilling?" It was "how do you easily define a threadmill?" The simple answer is that it can be done but it's not as easy as it should be. HTH

Kel61, You could start by choosing a standard Tap and modifying the tool shape drawing file to fit your needs for a thread mill. You can see the folder where tool shapes are stored by selecting the Parameters tab on the tool definition and clicking the "Select" button to the right of the Tool File Name field. HTH

+1000 kkominiarek, I used to work for S4A (Steve Biehl) years ago when they transitioned from Predator to Cimco and Glenn was their DNC guru. Glenn couldn't crash Cimco no matter what he tried but could crash Predator intentionally whenever he wanted. Cimco simply is the best. There are other products that work very well. We use Wire-Free CNC here but had Cimco and Multi-DNC demo to us before purchasing the Wire-Free product. The Wire-Free CNC system is very good and it works well but it is different than what we were already using as an editor. We still use Cimco that comes with Mastercam for making minor edits of programs and to compare files to see which one is more appropriate for the machine it's scheduled to go on. HTH

Gunther and Others, I've tried to install X+ for X5 today. I'm using X5 MU1. When I click on the X+ toolbar in the Mcam user interface I get just a tiny little bar in the Toolbar area. I couldn't see it at first so I thought nothing was happening. When I drag this tiny bar into the main viewing area of Mcam X5 I see the beginning of a toolbar as if there was only one function in it. I can't expand this toolbar however. I'm using Win 7. When I installed X+ it gave me a message box about a missing Logo file and one other file. I selected "Ignore" for both files and it completed installing. I hope this makes sense because I can't include an image. TIA. Cheers.

"It would be nice if mastercam would fix the problems they have without you having to be on maintenance." Tim Pruett, In a perfect world that would be done. There are a lot of basic functions that get overlooked when they are on a continuous development schedule as they have been since the release of X. The underlying philosophy is "don't fix what isn't broken". That's true of many things but another truth is outdated functionality should be considered broken. If it works but could be much better than it needs improving. That's what I would say to Mastercam if they asked. Improve what needs to be better before developing something new. Then when you have developed new things, iron them out completely so the integration is seemless and everyone's happy. JMHO

Leroy, Definitely take note and follow as much as possible what JParis says above. Tutorials are good but you can't ask a direct question to a tutorial. Having an experienced user/trainer to explain what all the parameters mean in a toolpath will reduce your investment in time by at least half when learning from a tutorial. In a formal training class you won't be distracted by work and can fully concentrate on learning the software. If you're familiar with earlier versions of Mcam (say V8 or V9), really the only thing that's the same is the name of toolpaths and most of the menu selections. There are guides and books to help but the best way is to start with some good training. HTH :-)

sml2011, It really depends on the design software that was used. If it is SolidWorks I would ask them to provide you with the .sldprt file or Parasolid (.x_t). If it was designed with Pro-Engineer, ask for a STEP (.stp or .step) file. I always prefer solid formats. That includes most formats except .IGS ("I guess it's right"), which doesn't use solids. Others offered good advice in this thread, only use .IGS as a last resort. Be sure to click on the Options button at the bottom of the File-Open dialog. This way you can select the type of entities you would like to open into Mcam. I typically only bring in the solid and not "edge curves". Generating edge curves after importing the file gives the user more control over which entities are used. Allowing for edge curves to be imported with the solid makes more lines, arcs and splines than are needed. A smaller number of entities is generally considered better than more. More entities need larger amounts of storage space and more time to calculate toolpaths. If solids are not an option, still try for the closest to "native" file format available. Find out what program was used to design it. Than you'll have a good idea of which format you should use. As far as "Witch is more powerful?", I'd say Glenda the Good Witch. But then again she is mostly talk. Unless you're playing a "Wizard of OZ" slot machine. Then the Wicked Witch of the West could be good too. Sorry, couldn't help myself.