Hey Guys, It looks like you missed me! My skin is thick enough. I can take it. But I have to make a living and cant be on the board all day. For me this is very simple. I came here to help people. I came here to talk Mastercam. I did not come here to discuss manners. I try my best to always speak with a civil tonge and be respectful of others feelings. James: Sorry if the "5000 posts" offended you. That was last month. Life goes on, get over it. I dont understand the reason the listing the number of posts in the first place. The only thing that should matter is if you can help someone with todays questions. You are not a God because you have 5000 posts. Your just a nice guy. with lots of knowledge, who likes to help people. That's admirable and I commend you all for doing it. Ron: I dont have a specific thread to point to. As a matter of fact the person I talked to probably deserved to get flamed. I dont know for sure. (as I stated before) I asked my customers about their experiences with the forum. Now you can take offense if you want , THIS IS WHAT THEY TOLD ME (yes, I'm yelling). 1) There seems to be a number of guys who think the own the board. 2) It seems to be the guys with the greatest number of posts. 3) They (the customer) was jumped on for asking a question. (yes it probably was s stupid question and they probably didn't read the FAQ). I'm NOT defending them. I'm telling you what they said. It's like this guys, If your fly is open dont you want someone to tell you? So wouldn't it be great if you could go back and look at your first post. If you saw your first post today you'd probably flame yourself. So let's try to remember, you were new to the board once too! So if someone asks for a free beer you can say "sorry we dont do that" or you can jam a pool cue up their xxxx. Some people go to a bar looking for trouble. Some people wait in the bar for trouble to start. Some people go to the bar to meet their friends and have a beer. So can I buy you a beer? . Mike Mattera

If you use a search engine like Google and search for "Mastercam Tips For Manufacturing" or "Mike Mattera" it should be the first on the list. I clicked your link above and it took me right to it. Mike Mattera

That's why we shouldn't be to eager to someone right away. You could be scaring away an important future assett to the board. I know a lot of talented people who will never come back here because of a bad first posting. Jimmy's "10 free postings" is a great idea. Everyone deserves a chance to make a mistake. After that they can prove themselves wrong (by admitting a mistake), or prove themselves stupid. Mike Mattera

My experience is thta the Centurion does not like extensions. Remove the .NC from your file and see if that works. If you want it to post without an extension you can add "sextnc " to you post. It stands for string extension NC. If you wanted a .TXT extension you would make it "sextnc txt". Find the section shown below (taken from the MPCENT5.PST) and add the sextnc. # ------------------------------------ #Cantext string definitions (spaces must be padded here) sm00 "M00" sm01 "M01" strtextno strcantext strm M sblank sextnc # -------------------------------- Mike Mattera

None of the "Entry" level products support c-hooks. So no squash in Draft, Router Entry, Lathe Entry or Mill Entry. TheePres: It's possible to have a c-hook on the menu, but I think it's still just a c-hook and not an embedded feature. Im not in front of a system right now to check it. I would also like top see it as a standard feature. Mike Mattera

NewName: Agreed! The content of your posting was fine. It's the subject that touched a nerve. Glad to see you admit that you may have reacted badly (as did others). Admitting when your wrong is important to be part of being in this community. So now that everyone shook hands and made up.... . Did you get an answer to your original question? It sounded to me like you've got it working now. I think it's funny: The best advise you got here was from Ron. The one guy you managed to xxxx off the most. . He's right. ptap_2 probably points to pdrill_2. Copy the contents of pdrill_2 to ptap_2 and remove the "dwell" variable. That should do it. Good Luck, Mike Mattera

MCFELIX: Word of mouth is always best. use your friends in the business for quoteing opertunities. Use your Sworks or Mastercam dealer. I have customers who let me know when thaey have extra capacity for programming and machining. I always do what I can to help keep my customers in business . It's just good policy. You can also talk with your machinery dealer and the guys you buy your tools from. Good Luck and once again, Welcome to the board. rex miller: Just so you know, THIS IS YELLING. Try not to yell at people. And welcome to the forum. You make a good point too. I know some of my customers put on a shirt and tie and go knocking on doors looking for work. Pick an area and go knock on doors for an afternoon once a week. Mike Mattera

Well I hope that C5 is taking off. Cause if he's landing, those guys are in BIG trouble. All VERY Cool pics. Thanks for sharing. Mike Mattera

I might have a V5 demo on floppies somewhere (pack rat that I am). I should put it on display with my Mastercam Mouse Pad collection (V5 - V9, all like new). Cant decied if I should call the Smithsonian Museum or Christy's Auction house . Mike Mattera

Give me big cuts with a big cutter on a big machine any day . Big blue 6's in a hot steaming pile. Well I guess the hot steaming pile doesn't sound that good , but pushing a machine and cutter to it's limits is always fun . Mike Mattera

Newname: Speak to others as you would like to to be spoken to. NOT the way others have spoken to you in the past. OK so you got beat up before. They might have been wrong. That does not give you the right to be mean to others. Everyone makes mistakes. Some people over react. The forum can be a wonderful place full of quality information. Treat everyone with respect and it will come back to you. Welcome to the forum. Mike Mattera

Multimedia CD training videos for Mastercam. You can watch it on your PC and then practice it in Mastercam. I'm working on a new one for rotary indexing and contouring. http://www.tipsformanufacturing.com Mike Mattera

That doesn't look like a regular Demo Disk. It looks like it might be re-packaged with some tutorials or something. It says "Industrial Press" on the CD. Still probably not worth $70 (with s/h). Certianly not as good a deal as my CD's . I also thought it was strange that someone was selling, or that someone would buy, a Mastercam demo disk on Ebay. But people get caught up in the excitment of bidding and forget to look and see what the item is really worth. Mike Mattera

MDSI - Compact II - APT programming. Ya know I just threw away my books about 8 months ago. I used that when I worked at Sheldon Machine Co. in Chicago. What a pain that was. First you write up your program. Then you type up a punched tape (and because all machinists are such great typists, this took hours). Put your phone in the "acoustic coupler" (a 150bps modem) and dial into the mainframe in Michigan. After all that you'd get errors like "Bad syntax" with no indication about what it didn't like. AAHHHHH!!! Let's all hold hands and say a prayer for the miracle computer graphics . (man i'm starting to feel old ) Mike Mattera

Jay, I'm sure Ron got thoses posts already . They were up there since V8. The were an interesting cross section of machine-controls for V8 (Moog, Hiedenhain, GE10500). I hope they helped. They are different than the post I sent you. That post is based on the MPFan for V9. It has beter support for rotary (contouring and indexing). Certianly if Scott Bond is your customer, feel free to share it with him. I put those switches in because I got tired of "put this in", "take this out" everythime I did another Fanuc-control post. Now I can give this to my customers and they can make this one post output about 20 different formats. Sames me time and gives them control over their own output. Rarely do I have to make "major" changes. And then it's more for preference, rather than functionality (what they like rather than what the control needs). Scott: I like your attitude. Everything is worth looking at because you never know what you'll find in another Mastercam programmers technique. There's no lack of variety in using Mastercam to "get the job done" . Mike Mattera

I took the free posts out. I know! I though of that after I started participating in the forum. I just have not changed the text on the page. Should just be web based tutorials now. I developed these to help my customers understand Mastercam better. The thing I've always liked about Mastercam, is that once you understand the basics, you can figure the rest. So I just documentated the basics. I've been doing training materials and manuals for a number of years. But thanks for the "heads up", Mike Mattera

It's funny how you can spend $3500 for a PC and then one day you wake up and it isn't worth the postage to ship it to the junk yard. And You Just Cant Bring Yourself To Part With It. Technology sure has changed. My new PC is a 3200Mhz. Thats 400 times faster than my old IBM 8Mhz. My new hard drive has 6140 times more storage capacity (please feel free to check my math. 20mb old - 120GB new). Mind boggling. Mike Mattera

This might be too basic for you, but I think it will be worth looking at. It's for V8, but you'll be able to figure out the differences for V9. I'm working on a set of training videos for Indexing and Rotary contouring. Rotary axis add-on's have gotten cheap and I get more and more rotary questions everyday. Hope This Helps . http://my.voyager.net/~mmattera/mastercam/...ane_tplane.html Mike Mattera

Maybe it would be easier to read if you flip the machine on it's back . Then you could run it like a horizontal. Mike Mattera

I remember when Mastercam V2 was just released and I was running it on my IBM model 339. It was a 286/8mhz with 512kb ram and a 20 mb HD. Damm thing probably cost $4000. But the prestige of having a "real" IBM (ooohhhhh aaaahhhhhh), and not an "IBM compatible". Mike Mattera

That reminds me: Anyone want to buy a Ti99/4A with the expansion case, RS232 card, and 93kb single sided floppy. I'll even throw in the Advanced Basic language cartridge Make your best offer . Mike Mattera

I dont know if this is approperiate (maybe I should go read the FAQ ). But conversations about PC's come up all the time with my customers. I just bought this PC off of Ebay, from a company in Ohio and Mastercam screams on this thing. Havn't done any bench marks yet, but at first glance this thing is FAST. What I liked most (besides that it's 64 bit) was that it comes with the Nvidia FX5600 8X 256mb video card. After I added an extra 512MB of ram (1gb total) and upgraded to the SATA HD, the total was about $1000 w/ shipping and insurance. I thought this was a super deal for (arguably) one of the fastest 64 bit PC's on the market today. "Two Thumbs Up From This Tech Weenie" http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=52475 Mike Mattera

Thanks! I found it. I only had to do 1 doz. things, 1 doz. times before I final read the docs . It's all installed and I'm loading the the updates now. Should have Mcam running sometime tomorrow. Thanks again, Mike Mattera

ncchk3.exe ??? What folder is it in? Mike Mattera

You should always (if it fits) have a linear amount in the lead in/out. It's best for the NC control if it's at least 50% of the tool dia. I like to use tangent, with 50% for the line and 50& for the arc with a 20°-30° sweep for a contour. It keeps it close to the wall, with a gradual lead in. In a pocket you dont have that kind of room. If I do, I use a 110°-120° sweep for finishing pockets. That give your a semi "tear drop" shape. It all depends on the shape of the pocket, but you should always have some length in there. Comp has to come on in some kind of linear move for the control to work right. Mike Mattera