Hi Colin, This worked beautifully, I can't thank you enough....I feel bad that you did all the work for me though. What am I gonna' do with my free time tonight ? I'm gonna' have to spend time with the wife now or somethin'.....or, I can take my dogs to the woods......hmmmmmm...... Thanks again. Mike

Hi Colin, That's awesome.... thank you so much. I will give this a go in the morning. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain what I need to do and why.....that helps me a lot. ......I'll never be a post writer and this is why....I did try to create a post block, and I was trying to use the "if cinc <> zero" to force the output, but I was trying to store the values in string variables that I created and that wasn't working so well.....when I wasn't getting errors I was either outputting all one's or only getting output for the first M45.........I was afraid I was going to have to learn about using buffers and like I said, I'll never be a post writer......this is really great, thank you again. Mike

Hi Ron, Thank you for the reply... ..I actually enjoy trying to figure this stuff out, some kind of "character flaw" I suppose.......I'm used to working 50 / 60 hours a week and our shop is on 40 right now ( hopefully not for too long )...so I'm kinda' bored....but having time when I get home gives me the opportunity to mess with stuff I usually don't have time for, plus I find it interesting....... This isn't a major issue but would be nice if I could make it work. I'm not looking for anyone to do this for me just a "nudge" in the right direction.......For instance, can this be done without using a buffer ? ....If I need to use a buffer...well, that's out of my league and without serious help I can probably stop right now.....or not :-) Good to hear from you Ron, hope all is well. Mike

...I must be gettin' old.....I remember when it was " Tripping over nickels to pick up pennies ".....I guess even idioms are not safe from inflation eh ???

Hi everyone, Sorry if this is long.To start with, I really don't know what I'm doing but I can usually fumble through and meet my needs without causing too much damage. This seems like it should be easy but I'm not sure how to start. I have a vertical with a Hass indexer with it's own controller. An M45 fires the relay that tells the indexer to perform it's next step. I've always programmed all sides from the top plane and used a manual entry when indexing was necessary. I proved my toolpaths using STL's and rotating them to use as my next stock model. Well, I don't have xform STL anymore so I'm trying to program using planes. I wanted to output my "A" values incrementally because my indexer is not capable of absolute and I give my set up guys a spreadsheet with their step numbers and index values, I thought it would be good to have the correct value actually in the program. So I added / rearranged the ptlchg_com, and ptlchg0$ sections as follows..... scomm_str, scomm_end, e$ scomm_str, "INDEX", cinc, "DEGREES" scomm_end, e$ scomm_str, "ABS VALUE =", pfcout, scomm_end, e$ if cinc <> zero, pbld, n$, sm45, e$ scomm_str, scomm_end, e$ Which outputs this.....I added the absolute value because........well, I don't know, so I could more easily make sure it was posting the incremental numbers correctly ??? ( ) ( INDEX A-90. DEGREES ) ( ABS VALUE = A-270. ) N85 M45 ( ) in my G code.......... which is all good.......... I only want the M45 when my indexer actually moves.....for instance, when there is no incremental movement, my post still outputs an "A" value... ( ) ( INDEX DEGREES ) ( ABS VALUE = A0. ) ( ) ....I put the line, if cinc <> zero, plbd, n$, sm45, e$ ...................I don't know if that's how I should have done this but it seems to work. ..................My question though is this.....In the first line, scomm_str, scomm_end ......... I would like to be able to output the step numbers for the indexer controller............so, starting with the first M45 output I would like to have the numeral "1" output in that comment with the numeral increasing by "1" for each subsequent M45 output.....as in (1) , (2), (3) etc. etc...........so my G-code would read like this ( 1 ) <-------------------------------------------- first M45, ( 2 ) for the next index, etc. ( INDEX A-90. DEGREES ) ( ABS VALUE = A-270. ) N85 M45 ( ) BTW......this is an MPMASTER post to start with.... So, I'm not sure how to go about this, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for even reading through all this. .... Mike

David, Man do I feel stupid.....thank you for taking the time to put up that example. All of those wasted hours creating STL's....Now I just have to tweak my post's a little.....I can't thank you enough man. Mike

Allan and David, Thanks so much for the replies, and David, thank you for the example. For as long as I've been using this software you would think I would know these things but I work in a shop full of verticals. I only have the one indexer, not a very good excuse, I know. I guess I need to learn how to create and use user defined tool planes, editing the post is not that big a deal. The hard part is our shop has been converting to Mazaks for the last 8 years or so and the mills are almost exclusively being programmed in Mazatrol. I probably write two mill programs a month...maybe....these days. I mostly quote now. Every once in a while they need a 3D contour or an indexer program and I'm the only one here who knows anything about Mastercam, it's hard to remember stuff........I know it's easier to create a toolplane off of a solid face if I'm not mistaken and that's something I never get for these parts. I suppose I can create a simple solid with faces where I need them ??? I will talk to my reseller and see if they can help me out with this. I'm sure there are tutorial out there. Again...thank you for the help, always appreciated. Mike

I don't know how to ask this in a simple manner. I don't have a true 4th axis but I do have an indexer. I have many similar parts, years worth, that are round with multiple features on each side. The wcs is the top of the part, the rotational axis is usually 1 to 2 inches below the top of my part. In the past, I would verify the first tool for instance and save as an STL, then, with xform STL I would rotate the STL from it's rotational axis and do a save as to correspond with my index number. After the operation that I just ran in verify, in my operations tree, I would insert a Manual entry with an M code to fire my indexer, and a comment to the operator as to how many degrees to index, and a comment to identify the index number (ex: 1st index )....I would then use that STL as my stock for the next side, .....and repeat as needed. If I had 20 indexes, I would end up with 20 STL files. How would I accomplish this using stock models ?? ...............I should probably program these as if I had a 4th axis with the z zero at the center of rotation but my owner wants all Z zeros on the top of the parts. I've never used the stock models but I can't find any way to rotate them. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I have a Quadro 600 that spent about 2 weeks in my new machine that I'm looking to part with. I upgraded to a K4000 which in the end was overkill for me, but.. live and learn eh ? ... It not the card that a K2000 is but depending on what you do it is a capable entry level card.

Hi Guy, No, it's 6061-T6, I just mentioned that it reminds me of mic 6 in how it's packaged. Yeah Thoob... I agree 100% ... that's why they don't let me talk to customers anymore Like I said earlier, this is a big customer and the owner wants to do him a favor with this one.

Good morning everyone, Well Kid, I think my customer is just a knucklehead. I have a thousand pieces of what I believe is like a mic 6 tooling plate pre cut into 5 x 4 inch rectangles. It is a Japanese product with protective sheeting on the faces with the name "Kobelco" on the sheeting. I think it's just tooling plate. From what I understand it is a setting plane of some sort for a digital photography sensor and the surface finish is "critical". We are told that any kind of liquid contamination will cause "blotches" and or stains on the surfaces after they are plated. If the sheeting becomes wet at all, we have to remove the paper, clean the material with a chemical they supply and re-wrap the parts with what looks like glad wrap. We don't want to have to go through all this, so we're going to try to run it dry. The kicker is that we were originally asked to bead blast the parts but they wanted a uniformity in the blasted surfaces that we can't maintain with our equiptment, so I'm sure these are being bead balasted after we handle them and before they are plated. Probably going to be chemically etched or run through an acid bath also. In my opinion, this customer is just being "anal"... but of course I can't tell them that. I've already spent more time than is logical for a $2.00 part, but as long as my paycheck gets signed every week I just do as I'm told. For all I know, these parts could be for the government Ninja, in which case they wouldn't be happy if they didn't cost ten times as much as they should. Hope you all have a good day. I've got a couple weeks before these go in. I'll let you guys know how it went when I run them. Thanks again for the suggestions.

thanks again everyone. Yeah Kid, that's what it will come down to, giving something a try, luckily it's not a very deep hole only being 3.5 x D should help, it's the (2000) holes that disturb me. I don't think I've ever used something like drylube on a cutting tool Guy, but even if it was acceptible, I don't think I can stop to spray a drill every hole or two. I've used a lot Guhring products lazyboy but the linky you have is broken so I'm not sure which one you're pointing at. I think at this point it's going to be the OSG SUS drill and like the Kid says, only way to find out is try. I'll try to post the results when we get it in the machine. thanks again everyone.

Thanks for the quick replies guys, I appreciate the suggestions. Hi Ninja, nope, can't use anything, no coolant, no oil, no kerosene, I'm thinking my best bet right now is an OSG EX-SUS drill ( OSG series 1100 ). I use them in stainless steels mostly. And yes, aluminum is cheap, the problem is machine time to run a test, every machine in my shop is 3 weeks behind and then there is the value of the job, not much $$ in this one and we didn't find out we couldn't use coolant until after we quoted it and the parts were on our dock ( arghhh ), Of course we will be altering our quote but the owner wants me to see what we can do to keep it cheap. These are pre-existing parts that we are just adding two tapped holes to. It's kind of a "favor" to a big customer, I'm sure you all know how that goes. Thanks for the suggestion Kid. Why powdered metal ? have you had success with these in aluminum running dry ?

Hi Dan, Thanks for the reply. I looked at Emuge for taps and thread mills but they don't make drills ( to my knoledge ).. They do make a "thriller" , drill and thread mill combination tool but I would need thru the spindle air to run it dry in aluminum, not to mention it's $410. ( list ) which is a bit pricey for (2000) holes. Mike

Hi, Is anyone succesfully drilling 6061 aluminum without coolant and if so can I ask what type of drills you are using ? I have to drill and thread mill (2000) M4 x 0.7 holes with a thread depth of 8mm in 6061-T6 and I have to keep the parts dry. I'm not too concerned with the thread milling aspect but quite honestly, I've talked to tooling "experts" from OSG, Guhring, and SGS and I'm not very confident in the information I've recieved. I was hoping someone with real world experience might offer some insight. This operation will be in a horizontal with a 15000 RPM spindle, I do not have thru the spindle air. If anyone is tapping aluminum dry that would be good but I figured that's a no go, so I'm assuming thread milling is the only option. As always, I would greatly appreciate any insight you could share, thanks ahead of time. regards, Mike

Hi ninja, The U2312H is a 16:9 aspect ratio display, for my money I'd try to get the U2412 which is a 16:10 , Just my preference. The vertical viewing height for the 2312 is going to be around 11.3 " where the vertical viewing height for the 2412 is around 12.75" , the overall horizontal length is only about .30" longer for the 24" but you get another 1.5" on the vertical. My opinion is the 16:9 displays are good for watching movies and that's about it. good luck.,

Het guys, My take so far.... the K4000 is way overkill for my machine. This is my first build and maybe I've got something set up wrong but I really didn't see a massive change from the 600 to the K4000. The program I used to check performance has a concave wave form using some very small ball nose tools with very small step overs. I'm sorry I can't share it with you. I did see an improvement in my image manipulation of the the solid and also the STL model after running verify, with the K4000 dynamic rotate, zoom and moving the model around in general was much "smoother" than the 600. The time it took to verify was exactly the same with th 600 or the K4000, 13.5 minutes with the tool and STL tol. set at .001, I don't know if I should have expected a decrease in time to run verify since I think that's pretty much determined by the CPU but I think in the back of my head ( scary place ) I kind of thought that verify might run a bit faster with the $800. card in there. I don't work on immense parts with thousands of surfaces and maybe if I did I would see a bigger difference, but in my case I just learned an expensive lesson. On the bright side the graphics number in my "Windows experience Index" went from 6.7 to 7.6, whatever the heck that means.... So if anyone is reading this and is contemplating their first build here is a list of what I would do different next time. (1) buy two SSD's and set them up in RAID1 or at least enable RAID in my bios before loading Windows so I could add a drive later. (2) start with faster memory, I didn't intend on overclocking, wasn't interested, now I'm kind of curious and I have 1600 DDR3 memory which kind of ties my hands ( I believe ). (3) i would have used something other than the stock radiator and fan that came with my CPU ( I7-3770K ) , (see 2 for overclocking curiousity thing ) I know I can add something better, but what would have been easy in the beginning now becomes quite a chore. (4) to get 16 gig of ram ( which i have ) I should have bought two 8 gig sticks instead of four 4 gig. That would have left me with two open slots to upgrade to 32 gig if so desired. It would have cost a little more up front, and generally the timings are a little slower on the bigger sticks but it would have given me a clear upgrade path in the future. (5) I would have done a LOT more research on a graphics card,... now,... having said that, I really tried. It was difficult, for me, to find real world "unbiased" information on what I could, and could not exprect from certain cards. There are those who swear by gaming cards, and those who "succumb" to paying the higher dollars for the Quadro cards ( through clenched teeth ) because in the end they are more stable. Reviews are confusing and almost pointless ( to me ) and I don't have any "techie" friends, where we can sit around and swap out multiple cards in a mchine and see the "real world" differences that each card makes. I ended up just throwing a handful of cash at it, buying an expensive ( for me ) card and expecting miracles ( which didn't happen ). For my home machine, I could have went with the K2000 and it would have performed well for me, I could have then put the extra $ into a new display. (6) for the drive that holds my user profiles and program data, I would have spent the extra money for a Raptor. I have this SSD boot drive that starts my applications in the blink of an eye, but I have a 22 megapixel DSLR and when I open a folder with 300+ photos in it,... well, I wish they were on a Raptor. The black caviar drives are fine for back-up, which runs at 2 a.m. anyway, but I should have bought the Raptor for my data files. Like I said, this was my first build, and I'm not unhappy with the results, I should have spent a little more in some places and a little less in others. I understand that everyone has different priorities. Hopefully this helps anyone looking to build their first machine or at least gives them food for thought. Please, if I am incorrect with any of my assumptions it would be great if one of you with more experience would step in. thanks for the link ninja, but she wants new living room chairs ??? , I think the ones we have now are fine, I can fold them up and stick them in a closet when I need more room to play with the dogs... women....

slepydrmr, That's awesome, you beat me to it. Thanks so much for sharing that. very cool. mike

Slepydrmr, excellent thought, you are obviously better at math than I am I will try that…. But, the snippet of code below is from setting the radial limiter to .25, as you can see only the block where BOTH the I and J fall below .25 does the federate change. Hi Matt…. Sorry, I don’t do sharp corners J Like I said, cheap and dirty, this is not an end all solution, just something I thought was an easy fix to a problem I was having at the time. N50 G41 D31 Y.25 F10. N55 X7.1972 N60 Y3.9199 N65 X6.5006 N70 G02 X6.2567 Y4.1153 I0. J.25 N75 G03 X5.5248 Y4.7014 I-.7319 J-.1639 N80 G01 X.275 N85 G03 X.25 Y4.6764 I0. J-.025 F5. N90 G01 Y.25 F10. N95 X3.7236 N100 G40 Y.35 Thanks for the Ideas, I’m always lookin’ to make my life easier.

I’ve seen this question come up a few times and I thought I would let you guy’s know what I’ve done about slowing my feed rate on inside corners. ALWAYS back up your post before making any changes !!!!!!!!! I created the section between the [ ] brackets in the “pcirout1” section of my post. Then in my control def. I enable misc reals , in this example, 3 & 4. I label mr3 as “feed multiplier” and mr4 as “radial limit”. pcirout1 #Output to NC of circular interpolation pcan1, pbld, n$, `sgfeed, sgplane, sgcode, sgabsinc, pccdia, pxout, pyout, pzout, pcout, parc, [ if iout, [if iout <mr4$ & iout >-mr4$ ,feed = feed*mr3$] else, if jout, [if jout <mr4$ & jout >-mr4$ ,feed = feed*mr3$] ], feed, strcantext, scoolant, e$ Now, in my MC file, if I have small internal radii where I want to slow down My feed I open the misc values window and input the maximum I or J value That I want to accept at the tools current feed in the radial limit box, and I put in a multiplier in the feed multiplier box. Ex: If I want to cut the feed in half for any I or J values smaller than .20 I would input A .20 into mr4 and a .50 into mr3, now “for that operation” any time my post outputs An I or a J equal to or smaller than .2 my feed is cut in half, and in the next block my Original feed is resumed. If I want to slow down more, I enter a .25 or .1 into my multiplier. I can also increase my feed around outside radii by using a feed multiplier Greater than 1.0, therefore maintaining my radial chip load on outside radii. The nice thing is that this works in my mill and lathe posts, you obviously have to Enable your post to output I’s and J’s instead of R’s. I will use this is conjuction with G61 and G61.1 at times depending on need. This is a very simple way to accomplish feed changes in radial output. The only drawback is if you have multiple, different size radii in the same contour and you want different, specific feeds in each corner. You might be able to expand on this, using multiple misc reals to specify different I and J limits with corresponding feed multipliers, but this was meant to be cheap, dirty and simple and it works for me as is, so I never experimented further. I hope this helps someone. Cheers

ha.. I like the way you think gcode ! .. I was thinking a new NEC multisync PA241W-BK... but I think she deserves more than that, how selfish of me. Maybe I'll look at one of the new 4K t.v's , I'm sure I'd.. ahem... She'd love one of those 70 inch sounds about right, retirement is overrated anyway.

Well, I ordered the K4000, I'm sure Nvidia has their motives for scaling back the 256 bit memory interface of the 4000 to 192 bit for the K4000 and none of them have my best interests in mind. But.... the K4000 should outperform my current Quadro 600 by a good margin though, so we'll see. On to the next problem..... Now I have to buy the wife something of equal or greater value than the K4000... hmmmm... any ideas ???

Replying to my own reply, I hope that's not rude. Now I have the Quadro K4000 to consider. 3GB memory 768 Cuda cores OpenGL 4.3 but... .... 192 bit memory interface. the older 4000 was 256 bit why would they throttle this back to 192 bit ?? hmmmmm. now I'm really confused. the difference in cost is only $75. at B&H between the Quadro 4000 and the K4000 Since this is basically a "home" computer, that I want to be able to run Mcam and photoshop on I was considering a gtx 680 but I'm looking at a 10 bit color display and the gtx doesn't support 10 bit color. But... I could probably live with an 8 bit display, really, it's all I would need, it's just that I can be anal sometimes. any thoughts on the memory interface of 192 bits would be appreciated, I'm trying to learn but it's hard to find a "real world" explanation of how much of an effect this will really have considering the extra memory and cuda cores. thanks in advance.

Hi everyone, Sorry if I'm off topic a little here since this is not a dedicated Mastercam build but this is my 1st build and I could use some feedback. I should have come here 1st, I'm not as knowledgable as you guys for sure and I just built my 1st computer. I thought I would share what I put together and what I learned the hard way ( sort of ). This was basically a machine for my home, I do some mastercam programming from home but not a lot anymore. I also run photoshop mostly. I don't do any gaming. The components I chose : Asus P8Z77-V pro mobo I7-3770K cpu Corsair 850AX psu 16 gig G-skill DDR3 1600 ripjaw x series , memory 256 gig Crucial M4 sata III SSD ( boot drive ) (2) WD 1TB black caviar hd's ( 1 for user profiles and program data and one for back up ) PNY Quadro 600 ( big mistake, trying to save money ) Pioneer black 15x Blu ray burner I put this all in a Lian - Li PC-7HX RT mid tower case. In hindsight, I wish I would have purchased (2) smaller SSD's and put them in a raid1 array , the way I understand it, if I would have enabled RAID in my BIOS before installing my OS ( even with one drive ) I could have easily added a 2nd drive later and created the RAID1 array, but I didn't do that, so now changing to a RAID set up would require wiping my boot drive and starting over. When I installed Windows I ran a script in audit mode using sysprep command to change the location of my user and program data to one of the WD caviar's and I'm not quite computer literate enough to know how that would be affected if I wipe my boot drive and start over so I'm just going to leave it as is for now. And here's the kicker, the reason I went with the Ivy bridge cpu was I wanted a mobo with a P77 chipset BECAUSE it allows the trim function to work on the SSD's in RAID..and all the mobo's with the P77 had the 1155 socket. Then I go and don't set up a raid... what was I thinkin' The Quadro 600 was a big mistake, luckily it was only $135. , but if it helps anyone else, the graphics card is not the place to save money. I will be purchasing a Quadro 4000 shortly ( I think ). I had a hard time with the GPU because I don't do alot of home programming anymore, so I was trying to choose a card that would work well with photoshop and Mastercam. I flip flopped a hundred times between workstaion cards ( expensive ) and gaming cards ( no so much $$ ), I finally flipped a coin just to get the build done because quite honestly, I spent WAY too many hours reading pro's and con's of GEforce vs. Quadro and it all had my head spinning. Other than some Mastercam and alot of Photoshop my home machine is just that, a home machine ( with no games ). Excel, Word, Quicken, etc. etc. I'm kinda' old, so I wanted just a plain, nice looking, "functional" case. I'm happy with the Lian-Li, I don't have a Fry's anywhere even remotely close so I can't go in and put my hands on anything to compare it to. The case at the beginning of this thread looks very nice though, I wish I would have seen it before I made my purchase. Choosing a case online is harder than it looks. But I'm happy with the Lian-LI I haven't run the Mastercam benchmark part yet but my Windows experience is a 6.7, because of the Quadro 600, my boot drive is 7.9 and my memory is a 7.2 I think. I purchased everything from newegg for just under $1500. I would love to here your thoughts on what I could have done different. It's been an informative thread. cheers !! So, last night I was looking at graphic cards and I was wondering if you guys might be able to help me out on a few questions ? I was comparing the Quadro 4000 with the Quadro K2000 ( roughly half the price ) , I want to make the right choice though regardless of $$ , but I'm a little confused. K2000 cuda cores 384 , Quadro 4000 cuda cores 256 K2000 open GL 4.3 Quadro 4000 open GL 4.0 K2000 Memory interface 128 bit , Quadro 4000 Memory interface 256 bit. Does the 256 bit memory interface of the Quadro 4000 outweigh the extra cuda cores and newer openGL version of the K2000 ? Can the openGL ver. be addressed with a firmware upgrade and what is the possibility that Nvidia would do that if they could ? I'm new at this and I've been trying to research this but it seems that most articles and or reviews always seem to revert to gaming which I don't do. thanks in advance for any insight it is greatly appreciated.

thank you for the link Iowa. much obliged. thanks for the response Dan, I've downloaded the X3 post but I have so many mods. in the X2 one I was using I don't have time to mess with it right now. We have (1) Mazak horizontal that I program about once a year so next time I program it I will probably be running X4. thanks guys. I really appreciate the help. regards mike.