The SS machines are definitely a cut (or two) above the "old style" Haas machines. We still have a MK 1 Haas with old green screen and it won't hold position at anything much above 60 ipm, even in fairly light cuts. We had two, now its one down one to go.....can't wait to see the back of it. I always have to reprogram if they want to run a job on it that we normally run on something (anything) else......

New to mastercam or new to machining and mastercam? If the latter this might be beyond the scope of the forum. Maybe break your request up into sections. Setup Lot's of options Toolpath Lot's of options What machine type......the list could go on and on, one of the nice things about Mastercam is there are always several ways to skin the cat, which also makes a quick answer to such an open request difficult.

#1 parasolid .X_T Always been totally bullet proof as a transfer file for me. Has anyone here ever had a problem with one of these? #2 .STP / .STEP Pretty good but I have had the occasional problem #2 Solidworks PART files much the same as above, Solidworks ASSEMBLY files can be difficult X X Last .IGES files I guess files notoriously bad for use as transfer files

X6, X9 and about to install 2018. Will probably keep them all on per htm01 above. We have a bunch of V9 progs. lurking in the files here. And I'm going to keep the latest and greatest "old style" interface just for nostalgia sake.

So your angular rotations were as per the drawing in the top view of the part. But he will not be rotating in this view. So this is what is important here. But how do you know you are getting the correct angular output. Of course it also depends on the tolerances and the diameter of the ring. Might be worth crunching the numbers through a compound angle calculator though just to make sure you are staying within tolerance. If say the print shows 30 degree rotation of the tabs in the top view the first few rotations might be OK and then you might go out as the variation stacks up.

Correct me if I'm wrong here Ron, buy I think because he has created an unaccounted for (as far as Mastercam is concerned) compound angle he will have to compensate for this on his rotation angles (indexes)....?

Using the 4th axis option , I believe, locks one axis and stops it giving rotational output and assumes 0 degrees rotation on the locked axis. You have rotational output, it is just fixed in one axis. Unless you can generate the fixed 40 degrees on the locked axis, you will need 5 axis toolpath. Not familiar with the new Moduleworks options, I saw a screen shot on here not long ago and it seemed to have a lot of options so maybe there is something in Moduleworks, but I don't think this would work with legacy multiaxis with one axis locked.

Opti rough with CAD as rest material will work with any .STL. That's why you can use it as a first roughing op with an irregular shape stock. Its pretty much my "go to" 1st roughing (without CAD restmill option usually) in 3 and 4 axis (and some 5 axis depending on geometry). So many options......I would encourage you to spend a couple of hours playing with the different settings. You can also restrict the area you are working with a containment and z depth region (steep / shallow tab) so you can have different settings for different areas of the part to suit the geometry in that area. I have read posts here by Ron where he has used techniques for "forcing" the system to his will that I wouldn't even have dreamed of probably because he makes such "tiny" parts, any tips to add Ron....? It was the accent that was the dead giveaway......I lived in N. Wales for many years so I had a number of "scouse mates"....

As Ron said the best way to go here is opti-rough. As always there are several ways to skin the cat in MC. Here's what I do: Run your first roughing toolpath and save the result as an .STL file. Select all surfaces / solid faces you want to machine as drive Go to the opti-rough toolpath and select this .STL as the CAD file selection on the toolpath tab(top tab) on the tree. Go to the restmill tab and select CAD file option. MC will now compare the .STL and the finished surfaces and only machine areas where it can cut more material given the other parameters on the opti-rough tabs. I usually do a fairly large step down and then use the step up to get the "smoothing" I want. You can also use the previous ops as Ron said but sometimes the results aren't as good for me. Only problem with using the CAD file option is that under some circumstances it will "lose" the CAD file, but if it does it will tell you and you can just reselect it. This is a great toolpath and it is worth playing around with the parameters to see how you can effect the toolpath. It is also good as a first roughing toolpath if you have irregularly shaped stock. Just save your stock model as an .STL and do above. Just got a note saying Ron has replied as well so hopefully you get a different way to do it. Sometimes one method works better than another for a given geometry so it's good to know more than one. How's it going over in "The Republic of Scouseland", haven't been for a while now.....

I had this problem too. Couple of things to state first I am on X9 and my post (MPMaster) was actually first developed in X and I have kept it with me and modified and updated it thru the years. I tried deleting the A axis in the MD but still got A0 output. In the end I commented out all the post blocks which generate the rotations and this gave me all the other functionality I had added but without the A output. Don't know if this is "the accepted way" but it worked for me and I have had several years of trouble free posting on the three axis machines, at the same time the posts are basically intact which makes post modifications easier (if it's something I want in all the 3 and 4 axis posts) as all the line numbers in the post are maintained. You can get rid of the lock codes by altering the header variable preset for lock codes. That's handy for machines that don't need them.

Can you combine a 180 to -180 travel limit in the machine def with the post switch at shortest distance? What about M codes to force direction? I'm pretty sure I've seen them as variables in the post. Control with misc. functions. Never really played with it but am interested in the skinny from someone with more experienced with post/defs/misc. interactions

Actually I think 20,000 is probably a bit much for most. I had a chip thinning calculator I got from the Stellram mill manager back in the early - mid 90s. Long before "High Speed" (or more accurately High Feed ) toolpaths even appeared widely here. It calculated both axial and radial chip thinning and as I recall I was stitching at 3000 rpm and 200 ipm in Titanium, came out like a mirror. If you factor up to 20K for aluminum most machines probably couldn't achieve the required feedrate, even if they had the room to accelerate. More useful for small diameter tools really. Many times I suspect what people see as better finish might actually be burnishing. I came across it here making swaging dies. After making the first one with the speeds and feeds I was told were standard, the end of the ballnose looked like clay that had been mushed. I immediately doubled the federate and increased tool life by an order of magnitude and a more accurate surface..... In that case I will remember to cry myself to sleep tonight...!

I think your having way to much fun for any one machinist, both here and at "work".....!!!!

Sweet......

300 - 600 ipm last time I programmed a 20K spindle (kitamura with plus head)

So did your reseller send you a posted toolpath or did they send a source toolpath you then posted. Either way did you/they get another alarm while posting? If not that would seem to point to a parameter problem. The problem I had above involved the y axis starting the cut and when it reached B0 (horizontal 4 axis remember) it wanted to do a full rotation before starting the cut again (with no retract) so that might be the C axis "spinning" you saw. I however never got a warning when I posted toolpath, so that kind of says that's not the whole problem, or even the actual problem as you did get a warning (or more accurately your co programmer). When you ran the new toolpath did the machine movements "match" the code ? Single block and check that out. If the next line of code defines a specific move but results in an anomalous movement or the motion breaks and restarts that might tell you something. This is going to take a methodical approach. I would recommend checking all the underlying components first, machine /control defs and look in the manual to see if there are actually different parameter settings for the axis rotations, there might not be for your machine. Then move onto toolpaths. If you simply make a toolpath work at the moment you might find the problem rearing its ugly head again unexpectedly because the underlying problem hasn't been fixed. Don't forget you were happily machining away for some time before some specific combination of parameters caused a problem. In the mean time you will need to be extra cautious on first runs, we call it full on step 2 here.....

Check your parameter settings for the tool through the tool parameters tab, not the toolpath parameters. There is an extra tab which (top right ) marked setup. You can define whether it is a horizontally mounted tool or vertically mounted.

And the people who do not get the above are probably not long for the machining world, at least not the machining world I live in.

I think the origin of "unwind" was from head/head machines as you are effectively unwinding all the internal wires and connections to avoid breakage. And I believe many more modern machines (Makino MAG 4s?) do not require unwind. So I was trying to answer the question of what it was derived from. Having said that C^Millman's main point was that a clear warning was ignored. My main 2 cents was from experience with the parameter issue and as was stated above there are many things which can cause odd movement in any machine and trying to look at it from a total system point of view. Not just the post or just the kinematic set-up (in the virtual programming environment), everything has to work together. And that, I think, would include the parameter set- up of the machine. I have found that it is all too easy to get focused on just one component of the system and miss the woods for the trees. And no offense taken. This is a tough game we play, make no mistake about it. Unlike most jobs once the rubber meets the road there is no delete or redo key to press to get you out of trouble. And it only takes one mistake in the many hundreds, or even thousands, of choices you make which ends in the successful machining of a part. So I never take this sort of thing personally, there is too much at stake.....and you ignore any suggestion or information at your peril. I think threads like this are what the forum is all about.

Unwind is there mainly for Head -Head (both rotational axis in the head not the table) machines. They can only go so many revolutions (or fractions of) before they need unwind so they don't break internal connections. This might also be a machine parameter issue. I set up a 4 axis horizontal to do multi axis parts several years back and we discovered 3 different parameter settings to define how the y axis rotation was broken. The manual (translated from Japanese) was as clear as mud so we just tried them all until we found the one that worked for us. You got the warning during posting though and normally such an unwind should be accompanied by a retraction from the part to allow the unwind. So look at machine/control defs, post and machine parameters to make sure all are playing nicely together.

For REKD HST 3 flute and HSV 3 and 4 flutes. HST for rigid machine / setups and traditional machining (good chip clearance for monster chips). HSV works better for less rigid systems, HF toolpaths (4 flute option) And of course there is just personal preference for the variable helix. These are great tools and actually we use them for roughing Al as well. One of our machinists has had one in his machine for a year and still going strong. It's the consistency of Helicals I really like. You can set your watch by them. And that's important for hard metals so you can swap them out before they chip.

Yes to all. I have the thing all modelled up. And I measured the angle on our comparator, so I think I am pretty close. Our lathe supervisor is going to use the trig method at the end of the current job (and rightly so as this was his request). Just thought I'd throw it out there and see if anyone had ever seen a spec sheet. Unfortunately no time to send anything out. Nothing like getting data three different ways and coming up with the same answer to give me the nice warm fuzzy feeling!

Does anyone know the Taper Angle for Hardinge HQC collets? Need to make up an oddball size and can't wait 6-8 weeks for custom from Hardinge. Thanks in advance

I used to use Volumil when Mastercam first came out with HF toolpaths. I'm now using X9 and I wouldn't bother now, the toolpaths out of Mastercam are much improved and the RCTF is much better than the Volumill output I used to get, and I hear 2017 is better again.....I am regularly machining 15-5 at 200 ipm. There are a number of ways to control and minimize airtime in MC, and the percentage of airtime is not necessarily telling you how efficient the toolpath is.

I have always preferred using Mastercam origin for all 4 axis work. As JP said use rotated planes for rotations. Always rock solid for me, and you can then use multiaxis toolpaths as well if your post supports. Some people use constructed WCS in airplane space but I have noticed this has a tendency to be unstable. And if you use mutiaxis you can lose functionality (for instance lead/lag) unless this has now been fixed. As for rotation Macros......my parents always told me not to disparage the afflicted...... Can't comment on the G254, never needed it or used it on our Haas machines....