Sorry about the Caps in the title. Didn't mean to be yelling.

I searched for this and was not able to find a solution. If I run a 2d high speed contour with finish paths turned on, and I set it up to lead in with a ramp. It ignores the ramp. Anyone else seeing this?

We use the invert-a-bolt on many of our large aluminum parts. The precision locator versions do not work well. Locate with a pin and use the standard to hold down parts. The Material they are made of is pretty soft. Be careful installing them. They ding up real easy. Other than that we like their products.

+1 To Crazy's comment. I have found higher Material removal rates and much less warping, and...The chips come out of the machine easier.

Yes, I get that once in a while. It just fills up your ram and crashes. What I end up doing is changing the tolerance of the stock model until i get it to work. Sometimes if I cannot live with a horrible looking stock model, I will run a partial stock model and save that to a poly mesh, then create a new stock model pointing to that as stock and add more operations...piecing together poly mesh's until i get the final stock model. Yes it is slow and a PITA, but it works.

You bring up a good point Crazy. To be honest I don't use my dealer much as I found this forum much faster. I will send them off an email and see what they have to say.

It is definitely the "all on" button. I have tried turning them on one at a time and there is not an issue.

I get about 5 crashes a day while turning on all levels. I am just curious if others are seeing this same issue. I always assumed this was a hardware issue, mine is a bit outdated now. I am updating my workstation and wanted to ask here if anyone else has seen this issue, and if there was a specific hardware component that I need to include in my upgrade to eliminate this issue. Any comments would be appreciated!

+1. Locks me up a lot of the time too!

All of my 5-axis paths lately that are generating a surface have been Morph Between 2 Curves. I do not need to use it often, but it is way better than my previous attempts with older paths.

We use Icam for our TCP Makino as well. I just finished beta testing their Smartpath system for this machine as well. It works really well for rapid moves when moving the rotaries. I add 1 point at the beginning of any new tool, at the center of the table high enough to clear in Z. Then Smartpath does all the work to make sure you clear your parts and fixtures after that. Saves a lot of time working out clearance moves

I have been using a process with stock model lately (in X6 MU3) that has been a little more reliable for me. If you can get a stock model to look like you want. I have had a bit of trouble with it leaving out operations. What i have been doing is save that to a polymesh on a different level. Then delete the Stock model operation that created it. Then create a new stock model with the polymesh as my stock and I do not pick an operation from the list. It just creates a stock model that represents the polymesh you created. It works pretty well for rest milling. The stock model does not go dirty all the time when you change previous operations.

That's weird. I have only used the dynamic contour a couple times and I never noticed that. I can't get it to ramp either. Maybe it doesn't work in the dynamic paths. I would suggest leaving the finish off and just add a contour path with your ramp settings.

Yeah, that is what I was going to do. Thanks for checking it out.

Here is a file with the operation. Cannot get a ramp lead-in on the finish pass

NO RAMP.MCX-6

I can't find any mention of this in a search. Was hoping someone could see if they have a similar issue, or perhaps know what I am missing. I am doing a dynamic contour with a 1/2 bull endmill in a closed pocket. Kind of like a re-machine after a 3/4 tool has roughed it out. I turned on finish passes in the dynamic contour operation using wear offset and a lead-in/out with the settings as you see in the picture. I cannot get a ramp lead-in or lead-out. I have tried it in X6 MU3 and X7 MU1

Gcode, thanks for the info. I did not have it enabled. I have it on now, and I will see if that helps. Thanks!

I have not. Do I just send them the file and explain the issue?

Ok, Not sure if anyone is following this or not, but I think I found something out about this issue. After I the issue went away, it came back again. Like any good issue does. I re-install MC to see if I that would resolve anything. At first it did, Then later i had the issue again. What i noticed was that I had the operations manager docked when it regened correctly, and undocked on my second monitor when it did not. So I undocked my operations manager and reloaded the file and the regen was successful. Save the file and reloaded my incremental backup with a still dirty operation, undocked my operations manager and it fails every time. I will see moving forward if this consistently solves this issue.

I attempted to do a little better documentation of the issue I am having in X6Mu3. I loaded a file that I was moving from one machine to another and changing the roughing process. I took an Rest rough operation that was tied to a cad file for rest roughing and pointed it to a stock model operation. I repeatedly locked up mastercam. This is the video of that happening. (had to put it on youtube because it was to big for attachment, and I edited out the parts where it is just sitting and calculating, yet it is still long)

http://youtu.be/0HoJ8pMRPWI

While I was editing the video and uploading it, I had time to try a few things. I loaded it in X7 and was able to get it to work. Post wise, I am not ready to switch to X7 just yet. Also, I loaded it in another pc in the department and it runs ok. So I must have an issue with my pc in X6. So I think for the time being I have a work around for this file, but I still wanted to post this video so maybe it will help you find an issue that may exist in mastercam.

Thanks for your reply Aron, It seems that I have made this operation work for now, so I cannot reproduce it at this moment. The next time I run into this i will make another video and document .what I did a little more and post it back to this thread

I was wondering if anybody still gets this issue. I get it quite often still. I tried this file in X7 Mu1 and it still would not regen, or allow me to close mastercam. I had to end process on the task to be able to move forward. I made a small video of how mastecam reacts when I get this problem. I zipped it and attached it to this post. If you watch the video notice that I cannot even select a different operation. The check mark will not move. The Multi-thread manager just stays on "waiting to translate" forever. If you try and stop the process, it will not stop. I have waited a very long time. The video was made using X6 MU3 but it does the exact same thing in X7 MU1. Anyway, I was just curious if anybody else is still seeing this, or if anyone knows a way to avoid this issue. Thanks

lock up.zip

If you are going to make changes to the View Manager. Please make it doackable as well, like the operations manager.

I just wanted to follow up on this thread. I am still using TCP and it is working great. I had issues with the transition from one rotation to the next, so I had to do a lot of pre-positioning of the tool so that it would not run into the table while it rotated to the next position. But, now I am using Icam's Smartpath software in their simulator and I do not have to worry about that anymore. It calculates the motion between cuts so that you clear your fixtures and material while moving to the next cut. it saves me a lot of time when programming for this machine. It eliminates a lot of strange machine motion between cuts as well. I am still in the Beta testing of it, but it is very impressive.

The codec works for me. Thanks Aaron!

Hi Aaron, Try as I may, I cannot get it to play. I tried it in Chrome and it locks up. tried it in IE and I don't have the Codec for it. Can you tell me what Codec is required?

I can log in and I get the link to watch recorded Webinar, but it never shows the video. Am I doing something wrong?