thanks. I didn't know how to use the alt c. I use rast to vect so much I wish I could get it on one of the toolbars.

in start exit, if I put rast to vect in the addin programs what will happen? I always have to select it from the settings, run user application. will this somehow bring it upfront?

can I do that for engraving?

it seems to be on a default of .250 for create arcs. i always manually change it to a min arc of .005 how can I make this stay?

never got it ron. still looking forward to it.

pm sent thanks!

sorry, I cant get onto that site from my computer either.

I usually use a slotmill and put a chamfer on the edges.its a quick and dirty way to accurately do it fast because it promps for the neck dia and the outside dia.it also works and visualizes pretty good but I can only put a 45 deg chamfer on the edges of the tool.also I have to program it as a single tooth cutter so it comes all the way out to visually see that it looks good in verify. I searched for custom threadmill profiles and saw a lot of posts about many of the carmex tools being drawn already and that they were on the ftp site. I cant seem to get into the ftp site. are these somewhere else or could someone email these to me? thanks mark

yes I use it all the time. I don't know if there is a way to open it on its own ,,, I think the program is called E_STAMP

is there a way to open this by itself to look at some of the settings? I use this a lot and if the raster image is too detailed it just craps out right away without even trying. if I go into ms paint and crop out what I need and then save it as a monochrome (loosing a lot of detail) it will work. there must be something in the program telling it the max size of a file it can convert. I was hoping to bump it up a bit.

looks like a broom thread. I think that's what its called. I recently cut one of these but had to use a g32 cycle as stated above. if you use a canned cycle it tried to feed in on a 30 deg angle to the correct depth and didn't work out right. we had to use the mating part for a gage. lucky we had it because I don't know how we would have properly measured it.

has this ever been figured out? I have 2 newer haas machines that run fine off of the usb. then I have a older vf5 that craps out at random points usually when its well into the program. this is the only machine we have with the min amount of memory.we just upgraded it to the max amount of memory. I haven't tried it yet but im thinking that maybe the small memory was causing a buffering problem?

worked great! thanks

thanks, yes I am using x9. ill try it.

we are working more and more with model based definition. this is an electronic file that includes a pro e step (solid model) file embedded in it.it is working very well but if I have to make a change to the model I cant within mastercam.it seems to be a "dumb" model with no history tree. im not that great at pro e and I would rather modify the part in mastercam if possible. I had to modify an existing part last nite with a radius that was missing in a very tricky place to reach. I created surfaces from solids to drive the toolpath but I wanted to remove tha chamfer from the model so I could use the solid as my stock but I had no way that I could see to remove the radius within mc. any ideas?

wow thanks! that works great even on an arc or a spline.

I don't know if im explaining this right. lets say I have just one line on the screen and its roughly 1.5 inches long and on any angle besides straight. without drawing any extra or intersecting geometry I want to break it into 5 equal length sections.

is there an easy way? I thought there might be a function in divide or break.

why couldn't mc just add a field for angle in the helix bore cycle? this seems like a simple solution .

I got real excited when I saw this but could not get it to cut continuous.

yes you are right. I didn't see that. the threadmill trick will not work on an oval only round.

I cut hydraulic 60 deg valve seats in 41 and 4340 pre heat treated steel parts all the time. the previous machinists who did this job would use 2 custom carbide angle cutters. they would rough with one and just touch it with the 2nd.the finish had to be 32 and they had to polish the surface with grinding compound and a dremel and a wood dowell with the 60 deg taper on it. it was an absolute nitemare because the parts weighed in excess of 200 lbs and there were 2 60 deg ports one was only about a 1/4 inch at the top and the other was about .5 if the tool chattered even the slightest they got rejected when QA checked them with a borescope and prussion blueing. it was almost impossible on the machine to check the finish on the smaller angle. it was also impossible to pick the hole up again to remachine it once its removed from the machine. these were round parts laying flat on a hass small horizontal with a built in 4th axis table. I tried every toolpath possible to get the 32 finish and could not get anyting to pass for a seal surface. that's when I tried using the threadmill function. the 32 finish was now not a problem without polishing at all (even running at only 3500 rpm with a .125 ball for the smaller hole) I can use wear offset now and have complete control of the diameter. its simple to program. the tol on the angle was 60 deg +.5 so it was simple to program a taper of 60.25 deg.

very nice. ive never gotten it that good using a surface toolpath. but it does still have a zipper line. threadmill will eliminate that.

hope this goes thru. M00006033-1 thdmill.mcx-9

I just guessed at the angle. 200 lines of code no retacts and no shift marks.all arcs no line segments..005 step down, for some reason I cant post the file here.