I just got my first look at the IHS post... ...say it like it is.

It was there... mostly. The tool crib had been there for 30+ years and it showed. It was the bottle neck of the shop. Elbow to elbow people bumped around trying to find usable tooling as their machines sat idle. There was no "tool guy" just a bunch of operators all looking at tool sheets scratching their heads. Things were a mess and no one could understand why. If you want something done a specific way then you have to train some one to do it that way. The cost of training and sustaining 60+ people was out of the question. The cost of training three people, on for each shift... yeah, we could afford that. It took a few people to find the right guy but once we did it was like magic. He had that tool crib beat into submission.

Changing the post isn't really a good idea because it is easy to turn off the CC all together. Some times you just have to get down and dirty and visually inspect your lead in. If your leading in to a small pocket with a large tool there may not be enough room for the lead in, MasterCAM will default to no lead in. Some times you can make the lead in smaller and get something to work. Every one says they go with 51% but that doesn't mean you will have enough room to do it. some times going with a 20/10 will do the trick or even smaller. Just get used to eye balling your lead in as soon as you create it to make sure it looks good. Another thing to keep in mind is your start point. If your start point is in the middle of an arc and you have start at mid point turned off then it can have a hard time creating reasonable geometry for the tool path. Try moving the start point to a different line.

60+ split between three shifts.

In dynamic mill. I just realized that. I have never used Dynamic tool paths. Just the Standard 2DHS. I am going to do some looking around on dynamic and see if it is more useful.

Assuming you are using the mplmaster post what you are looking for is this #Arc output for IJK #If you do NOT want to force out the I,J,K values, #remove the "*" asterisks on the *i, *j, *k 's below... if plane$ = zero, iout, jout, kout #XY plane code - G17 if plane$ = one, iout, jout, kout #YZ plane code - G19 if plane$ = two, iout, jout, kout #XZ plane code - G18 !i$, !j$, !k$ Open up the post, and search for parc. Then as is says, remove the asterisks on the I,J,K. I already took mine out

Operators on first shift and second never really touched the tooling. The tool setter does everything related to tooling, if some one breaks one, they hand the tool setter the holder and the tool setter takes it from there. Third shift there is no tool setter and all the operators have full access, though that will change with time. The tool setter would look up the information on a setup sheet that had the tool name then find the tool using supply point. We are looking at moving to a numbering system or bar code that can be scanned but are not there yet. We used a healthy Kanban system that works with supply point for order points so time spent ordering tooling was basically the time it took him to look up the tooling, maybe 5 hours a week, not bad considering the amount of tooling consumed. Aside from that and tool setting the setter would just hang out in the crib. Management hated it because they felt he wasn't always needed but having him there full time really turned the shop around. He would spend his free time keeping the tool crib in mint condition but there was only so much one could do. I would put together a kaizen on how tools flow through your shop. Walk with the tool from the time it is ordered and it comes out of the box till the time it is cutting in the machine. Having people who have no clue what an endmill is actually asked some really good questions. Feel free to ask some more questions.

AH, thank you J. I did some digging on the FTP site of my reseller and found the 60mb file.

I got the MP Documentation, it is still the V9 information. This info I already had. Isn't there anything newer?

Do you have 5axis for your MasterCAM?

And ask lots of questions! Find out who your reseller of MasterCAM is and ask them for the MP Documentation. That is several hours worth of reading as well as a Ref Guide. The reseller usually gives this info out no questions asked but they may want your SN for your HASP just to verify your MasterCAM is paid for. I am new to this as well but I am happy to answer any questions you want to ask but don't want to put on the forum (I often have a few my self)

MSC's CAP system or CMI is pretty handy. I agree with Raider that having a full-time employee is a great option. If you can that is. We at one time had a highly skilled and high paid employee managing the whole shop of more then 30 CNC machines running 3 shifts and each machine changing jobs about 3 times per shift. He was responsible for pre setting the tools (which is the best thing you can do if you have a lot of change overs) as well as in charge of ordering tooling. We setup the CAP system so that he could order tooling every week and used a KANBAN style pull system for the order points. MSC (if you are willing to put the time in) is one of the best options for tool management I have ever seen. oh, btw we tried replacing the high paid employee with a guy who couldn't tell you the difference between a drill and a reamer. After a few weeks of training we let him lose on second shift. The next morning was a mess, machines crashed, tools broken and the tool crib a mess. It's worth a few extra bucks an hour to get someone who can run a machine. Hope you find my opinion useful.

I just sent off an Email with my info.

I am working on making changes to the IHS mplmaster and am having trouble understanding how formatting works. I have looked over the formatting section of my pdf but still don't fully understand one line. example line: fstrsel sg70 gcodecc scclgcode 6 -1 Why do we need it and what does it do?

Thank you, I will spend some time making changes to the IHS post next week.

I could switch to that post, but there are a lot of things I would have to change, I am working on making the changes but wanted to know if someone could help me edit the post I already have setup for this machine. I'll look at that post and see if I can figure it out.

First off, I don't even know if this is possible but I would like to find out. I want to put error checking in my post for the output of a G40 - G42 in a G2/G3. To make it just a little more helpful I want it to tell me in the error file what operation the error is in. pcir$ # Circular interpolation 2 sgplane, sgcode, pccomp, x$, y$, z$, parcrad, pfr, pcan,e$ Here I have a pcan and a pccomp. If pccomp or pcan in activated in this line I want it to output an error but not shut down the post. I want it to also tell me the operation number (example op 12 contour 2d) that has the error. Is this possible?

In my book they were in the back, but that was with x5. You may need the instructors book now.

I ran in to the same problem, what I did was assumed the pocket center on x from top view was center line. then the Y would be ((4-2.7)/2)+2.7. That will give you center between 2.7 and 4 which is 3.35. So x=0 y= -3.35 center of square. On the rest it is mostly guessing on what looks good. The important thing is getting the tool path right. If your geometry is off that is okay. For the most part the path will turn out okay. BTW, didn't your book come with a CD so that you can run the sample file. My experience with MasterCAM is, drawing isn't where you spend most or even half of your time. If you get your tool paths down and understand why then you will be golden.

Unless that was intentional...

Thanks. I did find a typo prdrlrout should be prdrlout there was an extra r.

I gave this a shot and got a few errors as well as it failing to post out IPR. What am I missing? #----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- use_pitch : 1 #0 = Use feed for tapping, 1 = Use pitch for tapping #----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ptap$ #Canned Tap Cycle line number 1075 pdrlcommonb if use_pitch = 0 [ #line number (1078) result = newfs(17, feed) # Set for tapping Feedrate format pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgdrlref, *sgdrill, pxout, pyout, pfzout, prdrlout, *feed, strcantext, e$ ] else, [ if met_tool$, pitch = n_tap_thds$ # Tap pitch (mm per thread) else, pitch = 1/n_tap_thds$ # Tap pitch (inches per thread) pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgplane, *sgdrlref, *sgdrill, prdrlout, prdrlrout, *pitch, !feed, strcantext, e$ ] pcom_movea #----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <2> - PST LINE (1078) - Label was expected but was not found[7], Illegal character(s) encountered <2> - PST LINE (1078) - The formula/boolean does not terminate properly <2> - PST LINE (1075) - Missing a matching open bracket

I am looking to output IPR when tapping. I have checked over the forum and can't find anything that really fits. pplunge # if frplunge$ > 0, *frplunge$ ptap$ # Canned Tap Cycle n$, *sgdrill, g98_g99, *x$, *y$, *dpoint, *refht$, pplunge,e$ Here is the relevant part of my post.

To my knowledge nothing significant.

Maybe you can peg my next one. pplunge # if frplunge$ > 0, *frplunge$ ptap$ # Canned Tap Cycle n$,"G93",e$ n$, *sgdrill, g98_g99, *x$, *y$, *dpoint, *refht$, pplunge,e$ I want to output IPR in my pplunge.