I'm not sure if this is something that might be worth looking at, we used this program years ago for our waterjet due to it's nesting capability - it has multiple machine support including punch, laser, plasma, and shearing. When I dealt with them for my post the guys were amazing and gave me exactly what I had asked for, no questions asked.

http://www.sigmanest.com/en-us/products/punch/punch_powerpack/

I recently have just started to play with the ModuleWorks machine simulation in Mcam X7. I have successively created my machine and the simulation is working pretty much correctly.

However, when there is more than one operation to simulate (or on a tool change), the machine simulation simply "jumps" to the next operation's start point. Is there a setting somewhere that I'm missing to get the simulation to actually show (simulate) the rapid move to the next operation's start point?

According to a quick check online - this seems to be a greatly UNFAIR test. According to HAAS on their VM-3 series (http://www.haascnc.com/mt_spec1.asp?id=VM-3&webID=MOLD_MACHINE_VMC) the machine is rated as 30 HP with a max. torque of 90 ft-lbs.

According to Makino on their PS95 series (http://www.makino.com/vertical-machining-centers/ps95/) the machine is rated as 33.5 HP with a max. torque of 140 ft-lbs. With the HAAS only having approx. 64% of the torque and 3.5 less HP as the PS95 this definitely does not appear to be an apples to apples comparison.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm seeing - but according to that, I'm taking it as meaning that Mastercam is "seeing" the update but it has not been applied. I'm assuming that if the update had been applied, I should be seeing "Mastercam X6 (15.3.0.2) under "Help" -> "About" and under "Details" I should be seeing "Mastercam.Exe X6 MU3 (15.3.0.2)". Or does this mean that the update did take, but the version number hasn't changed due to the ".exe" not being changed ??

Just downloaded and installed MU3 - The install process went through fine. When I open MasterCAM, up in the title bar is says "Mastercam Design (Mill, etc) X6 MU3. However, when I go to "Help" -> "About" I'm still showing "Mastercam X6 (15.2.1.2) and if I click on the "Details" button, I'm showing "Mastercam.Exe X6 MU2 (15.2.1.2) and under that it says "The following updates were found...." and under that it says "Version = X6 MU3 (15.3.0.2)" followed by a listing of DLL's. Does this mean that the update did not go in? And if it did why am I not showing "Mastercam X6 (15.3.0.2) under the "Help" -> "About" ??

Thanx guys! I had forgot that when I re-did my post that I had changed that so that I could "see" what was going on to make sure everything was good - I had changed machine A to "all error messages to screen". Changed it back to "all error messages to file" and now posting nicely!!

I'm using X6. I have 2 machine def's, and 2 control def's, both tied to the same post. I have machine A as my default. If I post a program out for machine A, it takes forever "reinitializing" variables, then will say "not responding" - but if I just wait, eventually the editor will pop up and the program will post out. There are no errors reported either by the MP or if I run it through the debugger. However, if I use machine B - it pretty much posts instantly. I have tried a couple of different posts (the ones that are supplied) and they all do the same thing - so I 'm guessing it's not a post problem. However, the weird part is - if I post out a program for machine A through the debugger, from then on machine A will post out pretty much instantly just like machine B (I can even close the debugger) until I close down Mastercam, Any idea's why it is doing this or why running just one program through the debugger "fixes" it?

Found this article on the NET http://partnerfiles.spaceclaim.com/Miscellaneous/June%202012%20Newsletter.html

Interesting line from the article "During this event we unveiled SpaceClaim's unique and powerful solutions for manufacturing companies, including the first public introduction of our new MasterCAM connection."

Maybe there is some validity to this rumor??

I've installed MU2. Posting from MU1 worked fine, but posting from MU2, I get a bunch of errors.

 

I wouldn't have expected MU2 to upset the posting

After updating my system - I'm also getting posting errors: "A formula is attempting to read from a look up table that does not exist".

However - the table is there and the look up is actually working perfectly fine!! I've verified this with the post debugger and it can be seen in the NC file that the values are being outputted correctly.

After searching around on the net, like you have, I can only think of 4 things as to what this could mean:

1: This was actually an internal print and is meant to tell the QA what thread gauge type to use for the testing

2: This is the customers way of telling you what type of thread gauge they want you to use

3: This print was done by a draftsperson who didn't understand that "taperlock" is a type of thread gauge

4: Neither one of us (or apparently Google) has ever heard of a "taperlock" thread

My best advice would be to call the customer and simply ask them what they mean by that call out

Well doing 864 1/4-20 holes. Made a fixture plate with clearance holes under the 1/4-20 holes so I could use a gun tap and bolt part down with existing holes. 15 SFM=229 RPM's. So i went with 200 and feed of ten. No broken taps but about 2 hours of tapping. Only 6 parts on a job that will probably not repeat so I can live with it. But it is painful to watch a machine go that slow.

That's the max spindle speed (200) on my HAAS VF4 for rigid tapping, but like I have posted earlier I have had no problems as long as I stick to that. It may be painful to watch, BUT it has been 100% reliable for me

Just as a side note, if you haven't done so already, check your owner's manual, there will probably also be a max feed - my specs (according to the manual) are max spindle 200 or max feed 100 - I can not exceed either value.

I use OSG hy-pro or the exo series taps and use a spiral point for through holes in aluminum. I used to have hit and miss issues

with my HAAS VF-4 until I came across a section in the manual and realized that there is a max spindle AND a max feedrate when

using the rigid tapping (I was always way over the max spindle). Now that I don't go over these maximums I have had no problems at

all with the tapping - actually doing #4-40 holes right now in aluminum.

....

Haven't found another way around it yet. You are now number #5. Sorry.

...

#6 here

Win 7 64bit

Neat Stuff!! Thanks for the post!

After some digging around today I found the problem! It is a bug with the Setup Sheet Screen Capture, it is producing an erroneous value in the bmp's file header - specifically at offset 0x0a which is the bitmap data offset value. The value is being miswritten/calculated as 0x3a and should be 0x36.

We upgraded from from V9 to X6 a couple months back. After getting everything pretty much setup and running I was just recently looking into the setup sheets using ActiveReport. Looks very interesting except for a huge problem. When I run the report, I keep getting errors that the images cannot be found. After some digging around I found that I do have the images in the proper directory (../shared/common/reports/img). However when trying to view the images through windows I am getting an "invalid, corrupt or damaged bitmap file" error on all of the images except for about 6 to 8 of them. We have X6 installed on two computers and the second system is showing the same results. We had installed X5 awhile back (demo) and I checked the images on that system. It only has the 6 to 8 good images installed.

Is there some way to get a "good" copy of these images??

I have ran into what sounds very similar. I had the control definition set to break arcs at 180 and no full circles. In my case I was using R and not I,J,K. The problem ended up being that any arc that was 180 would output R and the next output would be -R and the next R etc. It was hit and miss on how the controller would handle the wrong -R output.

Ahh... thank you. I don't have a Block drill in my define tools page - presumably because I don't have a drill block in my machine def. That would explain why it is "missing"

I don't know if I'm missing something blatant here in X6, but there seems to be a missing tool_typ$. According to the tool "define tool" page, there

are 22 tool types. Undefined is tool_typ$ = 0, so tool_typ$ should go from 0 to 21. Here is a list of what I have for the tool_typ$:

0 Undefined

1 Center drill

2 Spot drill

3 Drill

4 Right hand tap

5 Left hand tap

6 Reamer

7 Boring bar

8 Counter bore

9 Counter sink

10 End mill - flat

11 End mill - spherical

12 Chamfer mill

13 Face mill

14 Slot mill

15 Radius mill

16 Dovetail mill

17 Tapered mill

18 Lollipop mill

19 End mill - bullnose

21 Engraving Tool

22 Bradpoint Drill

Which is my 22 tools!

So what tool is tool_typ$ = 20 ??

ISCAR makes a great product called "FLEXFIT". You can basically "build" any length that you need. One of the optional "heads" available

is a collet chuck so that you can tool up your HSS (providing you have the clearance for the nut). Unfortunately, the system is pricey, but

if you are doing this type of work alot it could definitely be something to look into.

The formula for rigid tapping is: Feed Rate = Spindle Speed x Thread pitch, so in your case, the Thread Pitch would be 0.0625".

Due to the fact that you are in metric, this has to be converted to mm, so 0.0625" = 1.5875 mm, as ReDEyZZ has mentioned.

So, your Feed Rate (mm/min) = Spindle Speed x 1.5875

Yeah we found out it was a corrupt Harddrive in our machine. got a new one and it's been running great!

 

Was quite a stressful weekend working around the clock on our part, AND trying to figure out why we were having problems with the machine.

 

Thanks for the advice guys!

Good to see that you got it fixed!!

Hmm, we don't use sub-routines or anything like that. All of the stuff we do is one-offs and we move every operation to the machine individually. So inside of that one operation it'll stop.

 

It does it on normal code too, just Coordinates, no G-code or anything like that. We've got kind of a run-around solution, of writing down the block# it disappeared at and editing the Post to continue the operation where it stopped. If we look at the code on the machine, it's all there but when we execute it, it just disappears.

It sounds like to me that you your memory possibly has gone corrupt (in the controller). I've ran into this myself on a machine that was used for one-offs, we are a custom shop, and so we would load a program, run it and then delete it, load the next, etc. etc. After years of doing this, it did corrupt the memory - however, the controller did have an option to "reformat memory". After doing a reformat, I had no more problems. Note that if you do have the same option, it will erase any program(s) that is currently stored so make sure you back up any programs that you need to keep first!