Hello again, Well I had a chance to check the forum again and sure enough, the world didn't stop turning when I left the U.S....haha. Anyway, I'm still alive and whole, thankfully, and I'm also past the halfway mark of my tour here. The barbaric heat has finally relented and we've had relatively nice weather for the past week or so. We've been warned not to get used to it though because now comes the pasty mud from the rainy season. I loaded the MC demo on my battle buddies laptop and, Holy Smokes, was I stumped for awhile. It's unbelieveable how much leaves you when you don't do MC or even think about it for awhile. Also, my unit is still intact with only minor injuries from a mortar attack and a little bit of combat stress setting in. Other than that, we've been blessed, no doubt. Once I realized how much MC I'd forgotten, I can't wait to get back to what I used to call "the grind". Hell, I'd give almost anything to crash a tool right about now. It beats the alternative, which I happen to be living. Anyway, you guys take care and I'll try to get a few more updates in before I leave here. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I went home for R&R last month and please believe me when I say that what I saw on CNN was EXTREMELY misleading to say the least. Although I heard no outright lies, this conflict is far from out-of-control like they would like for everyone to think. There's a lot of misconception being spread so please think of what's really happening here. This is a major conflict and people will be killed. More people died on D-Day than in the entire time we've been here. I'm not trying to write off the sacrifices that have been made by those mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, I'm just saying that we are definitely in control here (we, being the U.S. and Iraqis together). Okay, I've said enough. Take care and drop me a line sometime [email protected] JohnA

Hello all, Some of you may remember me. I used this forum briefly until my reserve unit got activated last November and had to leave my job. Well, I've been in Iraq for 3 months now and came to see what all was going on in the MasterCAM world. I guess there's no 10 yet, as I thought there might be, so I'm still not too far behind the curve. I hope to get a laptop soon and put the demo on it so I can keep brushed up and not be too rusty when I get home next year. I can already tell by reading some of the posts that I have forgotten some stuff. The heat here is incredible already and it's just June. They say August is the worst month so I'm not looking forward to it. So far no casualties in my unit so I'm thankful for that, considering what all has happened since we've been here in Taji. Everyone take care and I'll be back in business as soon as I get home from this blast furnace. Sincerely, JohnA

Just remember when you convert your solids to surfaces and go to fillet, make sure your surface normals, on the surfaces you want to fillet, are oriented so that they will intersect at some point in space. This is easy to see when the surfaces are 90 degrees from one another, they get a little more difficult to see when there are a lot of free form surfaces involved. Use the Dynamic feature under surface normals and switch them accordingly. JohnA

If it's not too late to post this: I took "plastics technology" in high school which exposed me to manual machining. After a 4 year stint in the Air Force I signed on with a plastics company here in Round Rock TX and learned about CNC stuff. They used Smartcam and Mastercam so I spent "off-the-clock" hours learning smartcam. All this was done as a way to make money while I patiently waited to be discovered as a huge blockbusting rock star. Well, I'm still here and it's been almost 19 years since I got out of the Air Force. I worked at a metal shop for 7 years and WAS flourishing at a quartz machining shop in Austin for the past year and a half when my army reserve unit was activated in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now I'm at Ft. Hood waiting to ship out. They allowed us to come home for Christmas which is why I'm even able to post tonight. Even though I am technically a generator mechanic (52D). I unofficially serve as the machinist (44E). Hopefully I'll fall right back in line when I get back from the desert. I wonder if v10. will be out by then. JohnA

I switched because I had to. I am one of the dying breed of SmartCam users. Although when Smartcam was being supported, it was fierce competition for MC, that is no longer the case. MC is a MUCH more powerful CAM package now. Everything about MC is better except for one thing, and that's actually insignificant because I can do what I need to do anyway. The company I workED for (My unit got activated and I will soon be playing in the big sandbox) had MC already so I was forced to adapt. It was MUCH easier than I ever thought and the features are so much better that I will have a hard time going back to Smartcam if I ever have to resort to that. Anyway that's my 2 cents worth. JohnA

If you need to maintain the plunge rate at a lower value in your toolpath group for other parts of the operation then you can always use the toolpath editor to change the feedrate on that particular part of the program. Right click on the NCI file of that particular toolpath, then shuffle through the cuts, passes, and points until you get to the point that you want to change the feedrate then click on "edit point" in the top left part of your screen. that will bring up a dialog box where you can change the feedrate at that point and you can make it modal or non-modal. I hope this helps. John

We have 3 Matsuuras with Yasnac controls and the biggest issue I've come across is that they won't enter cutter comp on an arc nor will they cancel on an arc like the Haas' and Fadals in our shop will. The issue is easily solved, figuring out what the problem is is the part that took awhile for me. "Incompatible G Code" was the message but I had never worked on a machine that wouldn't arc in to CC so I thought they all would. Anyway, that's the only thing I can think of. John

Make your line before your next tool change look like this: G0 G49 Z0.0 G0 X0. Y0. E0 The G49 will cancel your tool length offset and it will use the Z home position as the Z0.0 that it is trying to go to. Man, did that make any sense at all? I guess I have this thing about putting my thoughts into words, oh well... John

Hi all, Anyone having issues with completely losing operations? It happens to me when I try to get a file without first saving the file I'm currently in. I am using 9.1 on an NT platform. The file was created in 9.1. This only happens occasionally and the message I will get is "Error writing database to disk." At this point all is lost. The next message that comes up is "Do you want to create an NCI file?" If I click yes it creates an NCI that I can't edit in the ops manager and all the geometry is gone. I increased my temp file storage space hoping that this would cure the problem but if anyone else has seen this and knows what the solution is I would certainly appreciate some feedback. Thanks, John

Thanks Andy, I did a search first and found the same posts. No reference to SFM though. We machine only quartz and have a full complement of metal machinists save for one or two. Thanks again, John

Hello all, I'm so glad I finally found a Mastercam forum. I've been learning it on my own for the past year or so after leaving my last job after 7 years of SmartCAM programming. I was just wondering if anyone out here has had any quartz machining experience that they wouldn't mind passing on to me, primarily SFM. Thanks and I look forward to helping in any way I can. John