Going to see if I can talk the boss into those Saunders Machine plates. $4800 for the three machines, bolt them on, modify the vises and done.

After sleeping on it, I really don't want to bore holes in the tables.

13 hours ago, Kyle F said:

had to google,... never heard of that stuff but that sounds interesting... I'll keep this in mind for future fixturing mess-ups 

Me too  I thought it was slang for something else. Turns out it's a product

3 hours ago, rgrin said:

Ball locks is how I like to do it.

Either make a sub plate that has a pattern or even machine them straight into your table. I have seen it done both ways.

Saunders I think still does custom plates as well, so if you have something specific he might be able to accommodate.

He's also coming out with his own zero point quick change system that integrates with his subplates. Might be interesting for you if you use alot of fixtures

Just talking to another machinist in the company, he suggests putting bushings right in to the table. 

I didn't like the idea at first, spent so many years trying to not drill into a table, but the more I think about it I like it.

10 minutes ago, rgrin said:

Ball locks is how I like to do it.

Either make a sub plate that has a pattern or even machine them straight into your table. I have seen it done both ways.

Saunders I think still does custom plates as well, so if you have something specific he might be able to accommodate.

He's also coming out with his own zero point quick change system that integrates with his subplates. Might be interesting for you if you use alot of fixtures

Just got off the phone with them. the 3 plates I would need they do make, although out of stock right now. 4-6 week lead time which I can deal with.

How do those ball locks work with vices? Are they rigid enough for milling steel in a vice?

For starters I'm looking at the 7075 al. version of this

https://saundersmachineworks.com/products/haas-vf2-steel-fixture-tooling-plate

We don't have room for more mills here, and lately we're having to switch to rush jobs before production jobs are done. Looiks like that won't change soon.

Mostly Kurt vises here, and a bunch of dedicated fixtures.

My idea is to get subplates with a matching grid system in the mills we have, and maybe machine locating holes in the coolant channels of the vises so we can use T-Pins to quickly get vices fixtures on/off without losing fixture offsets etc.

Anyone have a similar setup? What are you using? If so, what issues have you found with your system?

Thanks!

26 minutes ago, neurosis said:

I was pretty bitter about the interface change in the beginning. After a while I just conformed.   

I actually skipped X. My last job had Mastercam 8 with the parallel port key, and when I started here in 2017 they got me  that version right away.

20 minutes ago, Jake L said:

Only thing I don't like about "defeating the ribbon" is if the button isn't on my "hotbar" sometimes I'll forget about it. The other day I rediscovered wireframe project, saved me a bunch of time.

 

Fair point. I usually translate and trim geometry and earlier this week I saw "Stretch" over there and was like hmmm. Wouldn't have thought of it, if it wasn't right there.

8 minutes ago, Kyle F said:

The only thing I ever have really customized was my right click menu,.. other than that I just roll with the defaults. ehh probably not the best choice but it's all good.

I had a nice rmb set up and one day it wiped my workspace back to the defaults. I got annoyed and stubbornly decided to get used to the defaults instead of customizing and learning how to back up my config, because I didn't think you should have to learn how to do that. The software shouldn't wipe your defaults out randomly. But, it does, and you do... So I'm on a learning and optimizing kick again.

*edit* I'll probably just make a batch file to restore my custom stuff when it goes away. Also, I just noticed some of my config is in my One Drive folder, which could be a big part of the problem. I didn't realize it was there.

I noticed a while ago Crazy Millman posted a pic of his layout, and it looks like he made it so it was back in X, where the buttons all stay where they are up top.

Using Autocad the other day I realized how nice it was when the toolbar stayed as it was, as opposed to changing based on what you click on.

The button to move something dynamically for example, will be in 2 different places depending on if I click a wireframe or a solid. I think I'd rather it stay put.

Also, for some reason, the option to trim a line when selecting it has moved from the right side of my screen to the left.

Thinking about un-ribboning this thing as best I can.

Have you done it? If so would you mind sharing a screen shot?

Thanks! 

34 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

Yep, I didn't show it on the screen (my bad!) I only put it in the comments on the video...

 

On the toolpaths type page, add those to the "avoidance geometry"selection... Then auto linking should work fine.

Looky there. Way easier than jump heights. It's funny to hear my methods as something from "waaaaaay waaaaay back" LOL

Can't believe I didn't look over there and see Avoidance

Thanks again guys

14 minutes ago, Jake L said:

Dumb question... will the tool actually hit the clamps? It almost looks like you have the clearance. Not saying I wouldn't want the tool to retract over the clamps, but if Mastercam doesn't see a collision it doesn't care how much of a "close call" it is.

Hard to tell from that angle but it would hit

Wow thanks for the video Aaron! Looking forward to training (I'm Dave Wilson BTW :hw:)

Just tried this, I have some clamps to clear, I put them in as Workholding but it still won't jump them. Wopuld I have to make the clamps and the parts one m,odel for this to work?

Sneaky!

Thanks very much!

Speaking of the toolpath editor... Where the heck did it go?

MC2024, need to edit some jump heights which I've done many times before, right click on thge drilling toolpath in question, go down to toolpath editor, and it brings me to the screen where I can add points to drill. The editor in the screenshots here is gone. 

Must be something right in front of my face...

That's awesome. Cimquest has done the same for me, also within an hour.

51 minutes ago, Jake L said:

Here's a dropbox link to a video showing how to use boolean to join all the clamp pieces together: Dropbox Link

The main issue was the cylindrical "rivets" going thru the clamp. The radius of the cylinder was .115" and the holes they were in were .124". So there was air between those solids, which caused boolean to fail. 

I used model prep > push-pull to increase the size of the cylinders to .130. (I also had to decrease the size of the hole in the center "bushing") Then I was able to run boolean and all the pieces connected into one.

Edit: just realized I forgot to show it at the end, but in the solids manager, you can right click the solid and click "remove solid history".

+1 to this as well. Simplify all "fixture" models as much as possible. 

 

Thanks very much for doing that!

1 hour ago, Jake L said:

Any chance you can upload a file of the toggle clamp? Seems like there's a few "workaround" suggestions here. I'm not saying they won't work, but I've also never seen boolean fail if it's setup correctly. And it seems like Boolean would be the easiest solution to your problem.

 

Sure

146114957-3-cl-250-vtc-clamped-nothread.zip

16 minutes ago, AMCNitro said:

Put them all in one level, and when you need to move them turn off all the other levels.  Or make them all one color and use select all

Did the level thing, thanks.

Did you know, you can select a bunch of entities, then go to the level manager and right click a level and click on "move selected entities" and theyll move to that level?

I did not know that. Found it by mistake the other day. I always used the "change level" command when you right click the screen.

Yeah I tried that, it says it would result in a disjointed body and failed.

There was only one piece that didn't change color though. I'll look into maybe it's no connected. 

Or maybe I can delete it and recreate it...

Thanks guys

Downloaded a toggle clamp from Carr-Lane, it's all separate pieces I want to make it one solid, no history.

I'm missing something, cant seem to find how to do it. ANy ideas?

Thanks!

1 hour ago, cruzila said:

Well, they certainly got all the buzzwords in there.....

They missed "leverage", you shouldn't announce something like this unless you've added how it will help us end-users "leverage" something or other against our "solution" needs.

I just text searched - 4 "solutions" and not a single "leverage". Bullocks!!

5 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

Many times. Here is 2024 with my 4 sub menu items and some of the QAT replacements for the Ribbons.

Thanks!

And you have Toolpaths, Levels, Solids etc.. on another monitor in there own separate windows?

27 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

When i teach Mastercam one of the first things I tell people is my way is what I have come up with for programming parts. Take what I teach you and use what is helpful to you. Canned training is great to get familiar with the software, but when I teach I use customer parts. I want to use real world examples to teach. As I teach I dump a lot of information into the training. I would rather lay the ground work for what someone can accomplish than limit them to what some book teaches. What are the traps and other things to be thinking about? Why use this method over that method? What are tricks to be faster more efficient when programming? Interact and engage the students and you see the process gain a life of its own.

I use no Ribbons and spread my managers over several screens. For me increases my programming sped by 20-40%. Having the recent functions parked on right side as a toolbar and list as many as the selection. My RMB has things to make life easier with Auto Cursor and Lock Auto Cursor on it. I have the stolen screen space set to 100% since it was stolen from us I want to know it was stolen from us not hide it and then accidentally click on it and loose my chain of thought as I am programming parts. The attributes being tied to the RMB or floating in my opinion was a poor decision from a GUI standpoint. Might be easier from a product development standpoint, but from the end user stand point I hate it.

Have you ever shared screenshots of this? I'd like to see it with no ribbon

On 1/28/2024 at 9:13 AM, KMartin said:

Are you not able to turn it .

No, it's shaped like a football. I looked into turning rough so it was a disc shape and then milling it into it's final form but this seemed easier

Equal Scallop for the win, thanks. I tried it before but it didn't look right. After you mentioned it I went through the tutorial from here and tried again. 9 minutes per side instead of 20 for my usual cheat (project)

12 hours ago, #Rekd™ said:

Flowline or  Equal Scallop?

Thanks I’ll try those. I brought it home to finish up this weekend and have it ready for Monday. I love jobs like this where there’s surfacing involved, but they come around so rarely I really never got good at it. I always end up fumbling around with the different strategies until something works. Of course there’s a bit of a time crunch on this one lol
I was grateful to find the Mastercam 2024 Mill 3D book on this site, tried to buy the print version but couldn’t find it. I’d love to have a copy of it at my desk. Anyways, I’ll go through it and try what looks to be most relevant for this.