Kevcam, Try using the chook gridpock.dll. This creates points and arc inside of a pocket that you chain. Mess around with it and see if it gives you what you want. Andy

Chad, If its not too much trouble could you post something here about the 4axis stuff. My mastercam support leaves something to be desired in the wire area. I find myself going back to v7.2c to program 4axis stuff. Seems like they took a step backwards in that respect. Thanks Andy [ 10-03-2001: Message edited by: AndyA ]

Chad, I do 4 passes generally and mcam doesn't cut and rethread the wire. Are you using leadins'outs? If your stopping on the contour to reverse comp this could be giving you the problem. I have a question for you. Our sodick requires the upper and lower guides to be aligned to reverse cutter comp (g141 to g142). How are you doing this? I have trouble overlapping cuts in 4axis since mastercam won't let the endpoint of a chain pass over the start point. If you or anyone has a work around for this it would be appreciated. Andy

Glad I could help. Andy

main menu-modify-break-draftline. this will break notes to lines. can become many many lines though. [ 10-02-2001: Message edited by: AndyA ]

We have a sodick 325 with the mark25 control on it. I program the same way with cutter comp in the control. I set my power settings in the table to "C001 H001" for the first pass and "C002 H002" on the second and so on and so forth. The operator then sets the conditions and comp in the control automaticaly using the condition function in the control. You tell it how many passes, wire dia., and how thick the steel is. With Mastercam wire I've found that you are better off drawing your lead in/out then letting mastercam do it. It always tries to head towards the thread/cut point on the lead out. I only use the auto lead in/out on holes. I have a wire tutorial book from mastercam that shows alot of tips on how to speed up programming a lot of holes or shapes.

keith, screen,chg attribs. You can window select or use your groups. Andy

When I have trouble with a helical entry I will make the tool follow the boundary of the pocket in a ramping motion. Set your max and min radius to some high number like 100. and turn on follow boundary. Set the min boundary length to 0. The cutter should ramp along the boundary of the pocket. You need to uncheck the on failure only box. Good Luck Andy

kenneth, i don't use v8 yet but in v7 i had to rename html.set and html.psb to the name of my post processor and have them in the same directory. ex. mphaas.pst post processor html.set to mphaas.set html.psb to mphaas.psb i didn't much like the setup sheets. way too many pages. i hope this works for you. Andy A.