When I wanted to go to Vo-Tech in 1971 they told my mother that it was too dangerous for a girl to be in the metalworking trades. That was all she had to hear. It was strictly academics for me and then on to college. Got a summer job in a machine shop and one day when the lathe guy didn't show up the foreman said, Kathy can run these parts. How 'bout it Kath?" He showed me how to read that c-clampy looking thing and the rest is history. That was 1975. I love making parts. I'm expert at Bridgeport work. I once overheard a boss telling a customer that I could really make that machine sing. Manual lathes are a little scary to me but CNC's are ok since you can close the door and push the button. I started programming in'82 using a calculator and a pencil with a really good eraser to write programs that got puched on this typewriter looking thing that spit out black tape. I've had lots of jobs from coast to coast and have learned something from everyone of them. I have more tools than any 3 people need and I still buy more. My parents are dissapointed in me and my husband thinks I'm a nut for not moving into an office job like he did. Mr Engineer. LaTeeDa. I don't like the office. Even here where I could have a cubicle in the office, I got them to put my computer in the shop amongst my machines and tools. It just feels better. Did I mention that I have and old Bridgeport in my garage at home to play with? You never know when you might have to modify a curtain rod or make a custom bracket for the bathroom sink.

Take a look at Data-Flute cutters. They have an online catalog with alot of information in it. Here's the url: http://www.dataflute.com/catalog/2002DFCat.pdf

Thanks for the help. I'm not allowed to change the post so I guess I can't use the misc.integers but using that "force tool change" will come in handy. I don't know why but the canned text just has numbers one thru ten on it. No actual text. Maybe this is something that has to be set up? maybe the last guy who worked at this station deleted the contents when he deleted all of his work. I don't know.

Maybe I should have mentioned that I'm a machinist first and a programmer second. Knowing how to make parts makes the programming easier. I learned programming with a calculator and a pencil with a good eraser.

I don't know who Phil is and I don't know who the dealer is but my training was on my own. I took a class at Camden County College that was supposed to be "advanced cad-cam". It turned out that it wasn't so advanced unless you never saw a cam program before. I would ask the teacher specific questions pertaining to what I was doing at work and he couldn't always answer me. And then I had to dumb down to keep up with the rest of the class. It was worth taking because I had never used Mastercam before and the company I was working for at the time was about to buy it and I wanted to be one of "the few". I got an A in the class but I still learn something everyday.

Thanks for the tip. I always forget about that next menu. The class I took wasn't very good for real-life situations and since then I'm mostly learning as I go. I'll have to come here and read all the posts. I bet I can learn alot.

If you mean select 'contour',ye, sure I have. I was just trying to eliminate stopping to figure out the lead-in and lead-out so that the tool comes down in the center of the hole..... Sometimes that breaks my train of thought.

I've looked around in the post but I can't seem to find a way to output G12 or G13. G13 is what I really want to use. The Haas I work on understands it but Mastercam won't give it to me. I would like to be able to use it for simple counterbores where the radius of the remaining stock after the hole is drilled is less than the cutter diameter. Pocketing is overkill in this situation. I'm trying to make things easy. Do you think that this _IS_ the post or is there something in Mastercam, itself that I can enable to do this? I never posted here before. I hope it was the right place to pose this question.