So not a Guru, What kind of feature are you having trouble with? Mine is usually on a helix bore, it'll cancel on the arc exit.

htm01, the box isn't checked on my system and it will still place cutter comp cancel on arc movements...

If your code ends with an M30 it'll throw an alarm. Change it to an M00 and it'll fix the issue. It can't "Stop/Rewind" in DNC, it can only "Stop". :-)

Never mind, figured it out.

Not wanting to thread steal, but I was wondering how to make it my default editor, so could you please help with that??? Thanks!

For the sake of clarification, I've attached a screenshot of where I'm talking about making the planes match to avoid "A" rotations. Sorry if I'm being over-explanatory. New Bitmap Image.bmp

If you don't change all planes in the toolpath properties, it will give you an "A" rotation since it thinks it needs to maintain the WCS.

Rotate WCS about the Z-Axis 180°. Rename new WCS Second Position or whatever else you wanna name it. Change the Work Offset # to 1, (this will give you the home G55). Now copy all toolpath folders and change the ALL Planes on the new folders to whatever you named your new WCS. This will give you a new rotated coordinate system defaulting with a new home position.

Here we've changed our "F3" key to be the hotkey for create curve on single edge, not sure if that's kinda what you're going for...

I noticed the same issue, as a result I tend to lean towards using a normal contour and trim the toolpath so that I can eliminate some of the wasted travel. But hopefully someone more knowledgeable will respond so that we may both learn something.

Would anyone happen to know if internal stub acme thread mills are size specific? I know with UN and UNF thread mills, as long as the thread pitch fits in the window on single point thread mills it doesn't really matter. I was wondering if the same holds true on Stub Acme. (ie: using a 5/16-16 Stub Acme thread mill to cut a 7/16-16 Stub Acme thread) Thanks!

Yeah, that's why I asked if he actually needed to use all 5 axis' to produce the desired thread or if it was possible with just 4. I have no experience with 5 axis. :-)

Out of curiosity, are you using all 5 axis' in the creation of the threads? Or could the threads be accomplished on a 4 axis machine? The only reason I'm asking is because when I have to do something similar to this on my 4 axis machine, I use transform toolpath with incremental and subprogram on. Just a thought. And this would have similar results to what CJep was recommending I do believe...

Alright, I figured out why it wouldn't work with the chamfer mill and the bullnose. (Feel kinda stupid for this one) Tool was too big. I'm not sure if that's adding to the problems I was having when generating surface code with a custom tool, but I'm going to scale the tool and double check it Monday. I'll be sure to let everyone know what I come up with, though I'm not completely sure if anyone's interested lol. Have a good weekend guys!

As a type of update to my situation, I've tried lying to MasterCAM saying I was using a 1.0" x 140°(included) chamfer mill and/or a 1.0 x .0787CR Bullnose and still cannot get MasterCAM to generate a surface code that I can work with... Tried radial and flowline surface finish, neither accomplishing my goal. My next and last resort is mathematically figuring what the toolpath would have to be and hand creating the zigzag toolpath that would create the desired surface... I've had to do this before when the company didn't have a Mill 3 key, but it really kinda sucks...

I would agree with your assumption.

I too have machined a lotta plastics using dbl sided tape. Works pretty good.

I had never tried to surface geometry with a custom tool before, but I have to machine in a 45° fairly deep in a material that's slightly harder than a xxxxes heart... I found an inserted tool that I think might do the job, but can't get MasterCAM to generate the proper surface. Any advice? I stripped down my file so I could upload it and show what I'm going for. The light blue surface is the one I'm needing to add. The hole is already there. The custom tool is on layer 113. The 2 toolpaths are 2 of my attempts... Thanks everyone! P.S. I'm not sure if it helps, but the material is 50RC Inconel 718. Painful.mcx-8

My co-worker just built one for me to use. Haven't got to test it much yet though. It's Intel® Core i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz w/ 16GB RAM. Has a Quadro K4200 graphics card. 120GB SSD and 500GB hard disk.

Very true. It did produce usable thread deeper than starting with helical entry would, though you are correct, it did produce some crap thread at the very bottom. But as long as usable thread was produced to the desired depth, I was covered.

Furthermore, if you had drafted your thread mill and ran a full verification, you should have noticed that it would produce double threads, as I almost made the same mistake once. I luckily caught mine in verify. So I say, verify, verify, and verify.

One part that I programmed recently had a hole depth call out that was too close to the minimum thread depth. The only way to get enough thread in the hole was to turn off helical entry and cut the thread with a single point thread mill. Had the option not been there, I wouldn't have been able to produce enough thread.

Go under "Settings", "Control Definitions" and look under the "Feed" tab. On the rotary section of this I'm pretty sure you'll see that it's in "Degree/min". Switch that to "Unit/min" and that should fix the feed rate problem.

Yeah, turn on helical entry. The only time you might turn off helical entry is when you're using a single point thread mill. In which case it won't fubar the threads. And the purpose of non-helical entry is to get deeper full threads on a non-through hole, I think. Had to use non-helical entry one time to get the threads to depth on a part once... Hopefully this helps in some way.

You can use shift to help you select lines rather than surfaces or solids. Though, since shift is used for selecting chains, hit shift, hover over desired geometry, then release shift to select single features or continue holding down to select a chain. Hopefully this helps?