John , Isn't a fillet an arc tangent to 2 entities? Could you use fillet in this case? Rob

Skit, I believe the reason that the surface quality diminishes at the bottom, is because the point of tangency of the surface you are cutting and the flutes of the tool is getting closer to the centerline of your ball mill thus reducing the surface footage at the tool-work piece interface. Remember the formula S.F.M = (R.P.M.*Dia)/3.82. My suggestion would be to step up the R.P.M. near the bottom. Also you could up the feedrate to keep the chip load constant. Hope this helps Rob

Medaq. Put tloffno=tloffno+xxx where xxx is the number you want to add to the offset, at the begining of post blocks, psof, ptlchg, and ptlchg0. The reason you put it in psof is for the start of the program i.e. the first tool. And it is obvious why you put it in ptlchg. The reason you put it in ptlchg0 is, for some reason you want to use two dia offsets for the same tool, you can do that also. HTH Rob

Mmphoenix, Try this website, www.ibagnorthamerica.com out of North Haven Ct. They sell spindle speeders and vacuum workholding equipment. We use their 4:1 speeder (5000 rpm input to 20,000 rpm output) and it is very reliable. Rob

Thank you very much everyone. Rob

Has anyone ever had any experience either turning or milling Meehanite? Rob

Connormac Just put the literals in quotation marks and put the ascii value for the pound sign outside the quotation marks. "G52X" 35 "500Y" 35 "501Z" 35 "502" Rob

Chris, You could add some logic in your post to say, if tloffno=<0, then tloffno=toolno This would have to be added in the psof and ptlchg postblocks. Rob

Tom, It seems we work for the same company ( small world, big company) We have that part here in our shop right now. You guys did a great job machining it. We have to install all the flange nuts in it. As for the Rigidax, we did not hace good luck with it as it shrinks too much when it cools and pulls away from the surface it is supposed to be supporting. There is a low melt alloy that melts with hot water (approx 150 deg.) but it is expensive. Or the epoxy based stuff (we call) "facsimilie". It is used to make fixtures by molding around castings or forgings. You have to be careful you don't contaminate the titanium. I will ask around the shop for any other suggestions. Rob P.

TheePres, I see that you are runnung an 18i control and I may be off base a little, but I am looking at a 6M operator's manual and it says in here, that if you give an M99 with a "P" code being a block number, it will skip to that block number. With some massaging, you could probably get it to work. If you like I could fax these pages to you. Rob

Lars, Here in our shop we are running a .390 dia Kennemetal TX drill through 1.200" of aluminum in a Haas VF3 at 7500 RPM @ 50 IPM. So those parameters don't sound too far off. Rob

I show this to the boys "who come a courtin'" 8 Rules for Dating My Daughter Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure as heck not picking anything up. Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them. Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to assure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric staple gun and fasten your trousers securely in place around your waist. Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate: when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I WILL kill you. Rule Five: In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early." Rule Six: I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make YOU cry. Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process which can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car? Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka zipped up to her adam's apple. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided. Movies which feature chainsaws are okay. Hockey games are okay.

Heavy, Look in psof and hard code it there, or if you want to hard code it at every tool change then look in ptlchg_com. Or you could set up a misc. integer to turn it on or off. Rob

Jimmy_2004, Sometimes when you trim a surface, the original untrimmed surface gets automatically blanked. Go to Screen, Blank, UnBlank and you can restore the original surface. I realize this is not extending your trimmed surface, but it gets you back to where you started from. Now you can copy the untrimmed surface to another level, re-blank the original. (just in case) and re-trim. HTH Rob

JohnnyB, If you are 2-D machining the spline, have you tried breaking the spline into arcs? We use it all the time for flowpaths in turbine housings and it works great. Rob

Heavy Metal On our 6-M controls, M20 unlocks the spindle Rob

B Whale, In your post, anything that is in quotation marks is called a literal string and will be output exactly as in the quotes. If you want the X0. to be output, then I believe your line should read pbld, n, "G28", "X0.", "Y0.",e As lone as the information in that particular line is exactly the same every time (no variable information) you can use literal strings.

B Whale, I kind of thought this was coming. Look for a postblock called "peof" and see if the G28 line is being output there. If you see a G28 in that postblock, just put a number sign in front of the whole line to "comment it out" so to speak, and mastercam will ignore that line

Sorry Marting, I have slow fingers today.

B Whale, It's in the postblock "pretract" add the line- pbld, n, "G28", "Y0", protretinc, e If the post you have incorporates rotary, this line goes just before it sends the rotary home.

Ken 2040, If you have a post dedicated to that particular machine, you can go to the post block "pccdia" and before it outputs the tool offset, you can add the line "tloffno=tloffno+20". Doing this will ALWAYS output the tool offset with +20 added to it.

Roengineer, In my post, both 1501 & 1502 are set to yes. I didn't format my sav_tosz variable because I don't use it, but you can define a new variable, i.e new_tosz, format it ,do the math, (subtract max z depth from sav_tosz) and output it to your set up sheet. Let me know how you make out. Rob P.

Ronengineer, Does you post have a postblock called "pwrttparam"? If it doesn't, add it somewhere before the psof postblock. If it does, add the postline "if prmcode=10027, sav_tosz=rpar(sparameter,1)". Then initialize a variable to capture the value in parameter 10027 (I used sav_tosz). In the ptlchg postblock I added the postline "~sav_tosz,e" which outputs the value in sav_tosz into my NC code to see if I was capturing the proper value. EX. pwrttparam #Information from parameters if prmcode = 10027, sav_tosz = rpar(sparameter,1) HTH Rob