Post justification an accountant would understand: Let say all His/Her data was in for the last 5 years was in an Access database . Your company was just bought by a larger company and they don’t use access. They have a completely custom Oracle database. They would like all 5 years worth of data in their format. You have a choice. You can enter everything by hand, you can write your own converter in VBA or you can buy a converter that is proven to be accurate. Now tell him he has to do it every day with up to 10,000 line of entry. I know what he would pick. The question is does your company want you to spend your time trying to get code that does not error or crash the machine or do they want you to spend your time improving processes and reducing cycle times.

FYI CNC sotfware sell posts for most 5 axis machine. I will add they are very good posts that are very detailed and machine specific. Depending on your reseller they are resonably priced fully supported. I say this as a user not a salesman. Goodluck.

Sounds like a ATI card?

From what I know about it, it is a addon to the design package. I tried to look into it a a year or two ago and found no real support east of the Mississippi. Maybe things are better. I did see a demo of CMM Works that looked promising. Its a addon to Solidworks for programming the CMM. I keep hoping CNC software will pick this up. Id bet if they offered CMM it would out sell Wire EDM I also hope if I keep typing this they might look into it and realize customers are tired of having a seprate programming system for one of the most bottle neck machines in the shop!

That is a nice system.

Leif, I think for now you are going to be limited to running your wires from above and down the center rotating door. You with have make sure your machine only uses 0-180 rotation and back 180-0. Support spring and cable protectors as needed. Check real close your envelope with your 5th axis installed. You will be giving up a pretty big precentage of it. Might want to do a layout. Looks like you guys have a lot of tables so I can assume you are aware of limitation of adding a axis not supported by the controlers. Just about all the vendors that had 4th axis at the show had a version to fix a 400mm tome stone.

We cut a lot of Carbon fiber here and the Feeds and speeds are more like steel. The stuff goes thru carbide pretty quick. We use mostly diamond. My theory is that there is a bunch of heat generated with the cutting process and no place for it to go but the cutter, since the chip will not carry it away. So real high speeds don't work well cause the rapid air movement caused by high RPMs keeps the coolant away.

You want to find out the format of the prt. I was unaware the UG part format was prt. I know ProE part format is prt. I think they have most of the bugs out of Proe/wildfire converter. Converter is pricey, check with your dealer. There is a lot of varibles in IGS. Infact my MC reseller gave me instruction to pass on to my customer so they could change their settings in Pro so MC could read their IGS.

Sorry I do not use UG but I have used Parasolids from Proe and Solidworks and a few other programs and I have never seen what you are descriding. I have seen something simular from IGS files. One thing, Make sure you have the most up to date Mastercam and the converters.

"I am soo sick of having to open up lathe and then file/get....." You know that in V9 you can right click the file and pick on "Open with" and your Lath9 is right there next to mill9. I do it about 100 times a day lol.

Cool, Camdude had already mentioned you guys as a fix. I am a big fan of purchased, supported posts When 5 axis machining is involved.

The other problem that may be causing problems is they are trying to take Mastercam files from a DMU to a to a Mazak Variaxis. While I think the DMU's "smart 5 axis controler" can handle multi WCS I thing the Mazak wants the part placed at the neutating point (AKA Machine zero to match Mastercam zero). Or at least the post is that way. Thanks for the help so far, sounds like the Router software is much less a problem then I feared.

Normally when I hear someone say Mastercam is junk its a training or post issue (or post training) just in this situation they have added in the Router. Since I know nothing about Router I have no idea if its a factor. I have no clue if Router has had all the upgrade the Mill lvl 3 has or if it has all the features. One thing they are trying to do is bring 5 axis programs from a mill lvl 3 site and repost out of router.

One of our sister companys was told by there reseller that Pro Router was just as good as level 3 mill at programing 5 axis mills. Anyone heard of this before? The Company bought the router and all I we hear now is Mastercam is junk. We are not sure if its a training issue or a post issue or Router/Mill issue.

John let me know how you make out. I tried a couple years ago and could not even get a demo of Verisurf. There is very little support this side of the Mississippi. I have been eyeing up the CMMWorks for solidworks. I wish CNC software would get into the CMM game. I'd bet they would sell more seats then they do of wire . Most of us mill guys have DCC CMMs now

My Chooks don't load when I use the Direct function out of Solidworks. The main one I use is the Right button mouse one. I am use to the zoom function and miss it when I start up a new file from mastercam. I can save, close out open everything back up and its fine. Is there a fix? Just me?

This whole thing was a big marketing blunder. Our local rep pushed the maintenance as a cheap way to get X to my boss also. Fact of the matter almost 2 year before that I told my rep he needed to come up with Maintenance since its easyer to just say "it cost 750 per year to maintain". That is so much better then trying get the upgrade cost approved every 18 months. If you happen to have a copy of 9.0 and do any 5 axis work then you know what we have is worlds ahead of where V9 mill started. Its ashame we could not got back a year or two have a release of 10 (current engine) and be waiting on Version 11. Not 6 releases of 9.1. It would make the suits happy anyway Either way its better to have 18 month beta then to give me a software that can't make parts or crashes my machine.

Open up your task manager. Open up one copy of Mastercam. Note the CPU usage. Now open the second copy of Mastercam. Note the CPU usage. This is due to the older MC engine maxing out one side of the hyper threading. Hopfully with version X this will all be taken care of.

If you went into Job setup Spindle/Turret and have it set corretly it should all work at the machine.

Gorn say: Reboot

Like mcpgmr said PC anywhere should do the trick. If he would be the only user it might be better just to let him take the thing and email you the g-code. If there was a problem he could always next day the hasp home. You should really get him a kick xxxx lap top if he does that for you, you know one that will play battle field 2 .

For family of parts I use solids. I associate everything to the solid and stock. So when I open up this file I can stretch my 2d geo into shape, update my solid, update my raw stock in setup and regen my ops. All programs look exactly a like and it takes minutes.

"I actually saw this once" You’re lucky; I used to work at a bearing manufacture in a union shop. Some guys would set rapids to 25% on all their machines at shift startup. Once we figured out what they where doing we did a quick investigation. Since they entered their production at the end of every shift it was not hard to figure out who was doing it on regular bases. Funny thing was when they tried to discipline them the union said no because we never told them they could not slow down the machine if they feel like it. If we wanted to now add that to the job description they would not argue it. Amazing how over half that production area is overseas now.

I used to oversee a half dozen Mastercam seat. I would get reports of all kinds of weird stuff. Always in groups or clusters. I think since Mastercam is a older style program it does not clean up after itself very well. You need to close the program and reboot. Just closing the program is not enough. If a gobal setting gets messed up restarting is the only fix. I got to the point when a programmer compained I just said reboot and call me if that doesnt fix it. Works 90% of the time.

He wants to skip all the head banging caused by the first year of use. Problem is you can not skip that. You need that base. I have known several “expert” Mastercam users and most of them do complex tasks completely different. I have seen it where one very good programmer opened up a model from different programmer and said flat out it was useless and he need to start over. A few weeks later the reverse happened. Yet both guys make good parts everyday. What I am trying to say is if a high end user tries to show you “his way” and you miss one thing or misinterpreted a way of thinking and this guy does not sit next to you, you’re screwed. Go get the training at Mastercam reseller. They will give you the base you have to have, from there make it your own. You will find some things that are talked about on these forums are great time savers and others are not for you.