We were able to drip over Ethernet to one of our TM1's for about 6 months. The other TM1 that it never worked on was upgraded to hard drive but havs problems communicating with the network. Not the IT guy's first priority so everything still goes in from floppies.

I plan on going one of the days, not sure which one. Look forward to seeing Peter and Steve from S4A again.

I do not do much wire programming, but have very little trouble jumping in after a 4 month absense to do a 4 axis contour in Mastercam Wire.

UG is an extremely featured parametric model package. By design alone it can never have the ease of use as Mastercam. The prime benifit of UG cam I can think of is the ability to mask or delete features for processing and programming.

Chris, A quality tool and gage shop is your best bet. You can try Ely Tool in Springfield, MA and ask for Matt. They do specials on demand for P&W.

You id yourself as a Sophomore Mechanical Engineer but indicate you will have a full year of shop experience this coming summer. Do you have any degree or certification from tech school or college? A single year of experience does not garner much money in this industry. A place I used to work would hire college graduates fresh out of school with a bachelors degree in engineering and pay them under 40K to start. They would work for 2 years, get Unigraphics training, and then leave for 20K increase someplace else. I saw this cycle happen 3 times in my 4 year employment. I was attending school part time, working as a toolmaker, and the company paid for any course I got a B or above in. I could also see I would have never moved into engineering there because I made too much money(to them) as a toolmaker. The money comes with time and proven experience time after time. Accuracy and reliability goes a long way toward these goals.

I use them exclusively when I run Inconel 718. I flood them with coolant and they give me up to double the tool life over most anything else

Being the only Mastercammer at my place and since maintenance and reseller support was not renewed, my only support is this forum and the collection of In House tutorials. I can not even call my reseller now, so this forum gets me out of a bind now and then. My internet connection and Mastercam are on an older computer, but better than not. I am careful not to abuse, but someone that used to work with me spent more time cruising Yahoo personals than working.

I like to import parasolids with the edge curves because I use Attributes MGR to separate entities and solids. Especially useful for 4 ax wire edm. Use edge curves to patch features in surface models. Never know when you can use them.

I was told by our reseller that if we did not renew maintenance by the expiration date that CNC charges 10% not the reseller.

It sounds like you import parasolids with edge curves. If you translate only the solid to another location, the edge curves will remain in the original location.

I use the generic Fanuc post without much code edits. I tried to tweak it but it's not as friendly as other MC posts.

We have not seen an effect on the geometry as the trodes are used full flush or submerged in the dialectric so really I feel geometry is maintained very well.

You can also change D+ to D- by clicking on CPLANE +DZ>Next Menu> -DZ. That will change your coordinate system to negative X

Sorry that the link I provided in earlier post no longer valid. You can path to the ProE manuals at: http://www.schroff.com

Guy, we also use a Bostomatic 12g with the 3200x control. What post do you use? I had S4A modify the post on the CD and ended up modifying a BOSS9 post to get useable code. Love the machine and also use a HAAS TM-1 with a shop vac for bigger trodes.

+1 to soaking the graphite in oil but I recommend only the dielectric oil used in the EDM. I have noticed less chipping when redressing or making a new trode from used graphite. Also better results with fine detail.

By the way, do everything in sequence, or pay dearly afterwards

deeherk, Schroff Deveopement Corp has excellent beginning and intermediate instruction manauls that I can personally vouch for as I have used them in Pro classes They also have manual for Pro NC or mfg. http://www.SDCpro.com

Is the company switching to ProE for CAM or just CAD? Mastercam has support to import Pro E files thru Wildfire 2.0 without conversion to Parasolid. If you have no experience with ProE you may find it daunting to learn as ProE has a similiar steep learning curve comparable to Unigraghics. Our company purchased a seat of Unigraphics to read customer files, but still draft in Cadkey and program in Surfcam and Mastercam.

I use the .1 hand jog until within 2 inches then .01. I would want to disable it for others though.

We have 3 Haas TM-1s that are all 2 years old and none of them have ever made the noises you are describing. Call your dealer and tell them about ASAP.

Thanks jmparis, it helps to know Firefox is not equipped for FTP. I downloaded Filezilla to use as an FTP client and will give that a shot. Thank you for the quick response.

I usually access the forum FTP using Internet Explorer with no problems after changing setting as mentioned previously. I have been using Mozilla Firefox 1.0 for about a month and have been impressed with it's responsiveness compared to IE under XP Home SP2. Can anyone tell me what to tweak in Firefox to access the FTP. I have been thru all the settings in Options but nothing is hitting any bells for me.

I know a driver is available for Mastercam but not sure to what level Mastercam utilizes it. Spaceballs work great in ProE where you can spin a model aound in space then pick any surface to sketch upon.