Hi All, I am about to upgrade my Laptop and had an excellent experience with lenovo and dell. can any of you perhaps recommend a specific recent model laptop that has proven itself to work well with mastercam? Thanks Peter

Time: 3 min 30 sec Desktop Dell Precision T5400 Intel Xeon CPU [email protected] GHz Windows XP

Does anybody hava experience with a Dell T5400 as sugested by dell? I would like to get a T5400 with Quad core Xeon E5405 (2Ghz) nvidea quadro FX1700 4mb ram. the processer is slower as the one suggested by dell, (and 1000$ less) with all the other specs the same. any opinions would be appreceated

I have a very simmilar noise on my 10 year old VF3, it turned out to be the bearing at the end of the ball screw. 3 month ago i took delivery of a brand new VF3, one month into it she sounded rough, it was a bad ball screw.3 days later it was replaced, and she is good now. A haas like any other machine is made of moduels, many of which are used in other machines. 10 Years ago i bought my first Haas, now i have seven, never looked back. in my experience, the agents i deal with always got to the core of the problem and fixed my machine properly within a very short timeframe. i never felt the need to withhold money or anything like that. if i feel a specific technitian did not do his ob properly, i send a strong worded letter and request a different tech person to come out. if you are not totally happy, share your thoughts with headquarters.

Thank you for the replies so far, I felt a bit overwhelmed and you have helped me gain a better perspective again. It is difficult to be reduced to a crawl once you have been flying. As far as scallop machining goes, I have the identical transition marks on each of my 5 machining centers. Other packages handle the transition better. Version 9 did the same and I was hoping that X handled this smoother than before.

I would like to hear objective opinions on X. During the long (and expensive) wait for version X, I have developed high expectations. As far as I am concerned version X came at a high price, it was the reason that got me onto the maintenance program in the first place, which I had to pay over 2 years because of the delay, then I had to buy new computers, now training etc. Right now I am frustrated because I do not see any substantial improvements. I see a totally different interface that is not very intuitive, with strange pictures. The computer crashes on ongoing bases, tech support appears to be overloaded. 3 hrs ago I tried to print, the print came out crap, I got kicked out of mastercam twice, after going back in, the zoom did not work, I had to reboot to get this working. Tech support did not return my call in 3 hrs. The surface machined part does not look better, in fact I found the same solid machined on a different cam package looks better than the one with the master cam generated tool path. (Scallop leaves a lot of transition marks). What is going on here? I have never had anything negative to say about Mastercam, other people bought the package because of my praise for its capability. Will this get any better? Am I too entrenched in the version 9 interfaces? Are there others who feel the same way? Peter

Still out there, learning

Yesterday, I have placed an order for My 4th Haas, this last purchase will replace My only non Haas. Regards Peter

Slightly unrelated to Mastercam, but .... Can anybody reccomend a good, very shielded cable to communicate with the Machine. The RS232 (serial) cable runs past a machining center, when I switch this Machine off I am fine. Re routing would ad a lot of length, so I was hoping for a better cable. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I am sure there are people out there not as good as others, they also would like to share some of what they know, to give back. They may not always give the best reply. penalizing them with a lower rating may stop them from participating. Have a great day

The Inch system comes in handy whenever I mess up with My size. I am known to work in mm, so when I explain that something is only 4/1000 under, it sounds a lot better than 0.1

Metric Rocks ...... Most Countries that used to be Imperial have converted to mm. Canada due its dependence to the USA hangs between the two. I beleive, in time to come, the "Global Village" will only work with one system, Metric. The sooner that happens the better, I am tired of having to stock taps, reamers, screws, dowels etc. in two currencies. I appologize to most of you who have grown up with the Imperial System, but I honestly feel it is time to get rid of it. No bad feelings Peter

Four Years ago I was confronted with the same problem and went with a Haas. Now I have 3 off them and My next machine will also be a Haas. However, I have worked with a Mazak before and found them to be very good machines also. Hurco and Fadal I don't know anything about. With Haas, I found, You get a lot of value for Your Money.

Thank You, after burning the midnight oil last night, I actually got it right. It even works with each of My comm programs. The main reason was a decrease in boud rate from 2400 to 1200 (besides shortening the cable etc.)

Thanks Mopar, You have mentioned some very good points, I have replaced the cable, (the old one was made up of a short one that had the "switch" in it, and 2 straight through extensions.) after that it worked a lot better. However It is too early to say that, that was the root of all problems. I would appreceate it if you could E-mail that program. also, If it is ok with You, I would like to E-mail You direct in case I have a problem down the road. Regards Peter

I have an older Maho 600 e. Sending programms to the machine has always been touch and go. Sometimes I get it right, the next time I get an error, play around and get it right. however, I don't have a clue as to what gets it right. Is anybody out there with a MAHO 600 E I could talk to about the settings and what comm programm is being used to sent data.

My Birth certificate say's 43, I don't beleive it though. Educated as a toolmaker in Austria I immigrated to South africa in 1977. After working as a toolmaker for 10 years (building clamping jigs for the brake industry)I started My own business building mainly Clamping fixtures for CNC's. I Immigrated to Canada 6 Years ago started a Machine shop and stayed away from manual machines completely. Now I still design and build special purpose clamping jigs, and do all sorts of custom machining. since working with CAD CAM I have found a new love for My Job that stay's exciting with all the new new developments.

You may have tried this already, screen - configure - screen number of entities for dynamic rotation, mine is set to 3000

Go to Screen-Configure-Operation default-job setup, de-select the checkmark and save the new settings.

Pefferlaw is about 1/2 hrs drive North from here,

Go to Screen - Configure - Allocations, and pump up the memory allocations. I have a simmilar Machine, and My settings are: 10000 10000 500 80000 30000 My Machine works fine with those settings Regards Peter

In My opinion, level 2 is a step to get to level 3, the main benefit is in surfacing. If You do not do surface machining, You will have a tough job justifying it, if you do surfacing, then convince the Guy's to go to level 3 rather than 2. Regards Peter

Being an older controll I keep having difficulties Communicating, running out of memory, no drip feed etc. Is anybody out there that has upgraded, part or the whole controll, Retrofit etc. would be great if someone could share any experiences etc. sorry to get a little of the mastercam track.

Development Guy, I would like to know if You Guy's are planing to integrate SOLIDS into the next major release. [This message has been edited by TOOLDEV (edited 04-20-2001).]

I would appreciate the ability to assign colours to layers automatically, instead of picking them separate.