Gentlemen

Ill try that. 

Thank you

Hello all

I cant seem to find a way to do a helical interpolation outside of a circle.

say like cutting down a block to leave a cylinder or post in the middle of the block of stock

i dont want to do depth cuts. just want it to H.I down as it cuts. i can do that with a manualy written sub program easy enough

but how can i do it in mastercam X8?

thank you

Oh, oh

anybody know what this means exactly.

I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks

Well im liking x8 so far. fer sure was the easiest upgrade ive done since x3

I was having download trouble as well, so i started my download after 5pm, Bingo! lot less corp. traffic after 5pm

Thanks for the explanation Mr. Morris

Heres one we did for the massachusettes state police this year, this one is the test ball. does not have the high polish we put on the gift ball we give the customer

John

that's pretty cool man, I had no idea that was possible.

so the sphere is not even needed? or whats going on in the solids window? wow

and just a simple contour? I had thought there would be a surface type

dude, please explain this a little.

you def know more that my local reseller, his attempt was nothing like this

I know thats pretty dang primitive, I need to learn more.

But if i was using the A drive y-axis substitution i could use a longer than 2.9" graphic and get no distortion,

that's what i need

Regular Guy, thank you for your offer to help

here is how i am presently able to do "some" engraving on the ball. the artwork must be no more than about 2.9" or it will distort greatly, and it cant go to far in x, or same thing happens

the shaft in the left side of the ball represents where the rotary a drive is. opposite from most machines because of the other special work this machine does

it's never removed from the table

So I rotate the ball 120 deg and then engrave something else, then one more rotation, one more engraving. that's about all i can do now

EXAMPLE.zip

Hello all

i have a vertical mill with an A drive and a solid 4" sphere mounted in it's centerline

and i would like to use axis substitution of Y to engrave a few designs on it, all the way around it. Say like engraving it into a crude globe

using a .062 ball mill to cut with

how do i make that happen? im using x7 The machine is a VF3 haas vertical mill.

does it matter if i use a solid or a surface for the sphere? if so why?

i'm kinda new to mastercam and dont use it that often. not like the experienced members of this board

any help would be appreciated

Thank you

Roger

6 years ago i built a small machine shop to run for my new employers, an aircraft completion station. Haas did not recommend i bolt down anything. so i didn't

we have all haas machines a vf2 vf3-yt a gr510 and one sl-30 and some manual machines and are needing to get another vf3. we cut 90% al with a little titanium and 316 and plastics as well. never had a moments trouble.

Thank you all for your replies

Hello all

In my particular field i quite often need to leave a cosmetic pattern when i machine , oh say a large pocket

laying down attractive tool marks for the customers is a good thing because they are often in plain view.

so when i cut a pocket i have to manually go into the program and raise the tool to like z.1 when it travels

across the pocket so the usually true spiral tool path is not cluttered with straight lines across it.

is there anyway to have mastercam raise the tool before it travels across the pattern?

i use retract between cuts on a solid , but cant find anything like that in the other tool paths

Any help would be great

Thank you

What would be a good one?

Maybe you need to look at the Settings/Configuration/Screen section and set the "Number of entities for dynamic rotation" to zero (this forces Mastercam to keep all the geometry on the screen rather than a set number of entities).

 

But toolpaths still usually disappear when you dynamic rotate.

Thanks. that's the ticket. dont lose any geom now.

What version, what os, what video card? Regardless, this will usually fix it.

 

Right click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Adjust for best performance.

Thanks but that did not do it.

some geometry rotates. but some text here, some geom there just disappear when rotating.

very strange

Sorry i should have thought to give that.

X6 video card is the one recommended by the mastercam website Nvidia quadro NVS 450x16 512mb

and windows 7

Hello all

Im hoping that someone knows what im doing wrong here.

why is it that when i pan/rotate in 3d i lose sight of some geometry and tool paths?

Thank you for the help

Thank you

Hello all

Used to be when using x5 , if you went to files button then clicked on open the window would popup and on the left side of it was an area where you could add directories for kind of a easy quick way

to access the dir's that i used most often. when i upgraded to x6 I lost that. Is there a way to turn that back on? or is it lost?

thanks

Hello

Any of you guys ever seen this?

When i went from x5 to x6 months ago I started getting this here before unseen box popping up saying so ans so post variable was re-initialized to so and so value

and some of my posted programs have on my tool length offsets line which usually reads

g43 h1 z1. m3

would have a extra m8 or m9 thrown in between the z1. and m3.

anybody can give me some help/advice id appreciate it i'd like to keep using x6 if i can get this fixed.

Thank you

This is the first time ive noticed Origin mentioned. is it supposed to be center bottom of tool? or where

Ok, Thanks RN

TAPE 2 THD MILL.MCX-5

Yeah, deleting that stuff did not work, only comes back with new error "improper argument"