On 3/21/2017 at 7:55 AM, shimmer64 said:

Hi all, can anybody tell me if mastercam is good software for cutting electrodes? I know worknc they have a z-level remachine and you can trim programs as much as you want. Does the new mastercam 2017 have the trimming and remach capibilitles?

Mastercam will cut electrodes as well as cores and cavities.  You might have to do some prep work on your geometry to get what you want.  It does not have the trim that WorkNC has.  It's a nice feature to get rid of unnecessary cutting but it's not a must.  I recommend that you find a local mold shop that uses MC and ask them if you can have a looky loo.

10 hours ago, Müřlıń® said:

Perhaps you just don't know how to use them.

Leftover is a 20 year old solution and did a great job in it's day.

You are the one who is behind the times for not moving forward with the high speed tool paths, most of which are stock aware.

Thanks for reminding me why I hardly ever bother posting anything here anymore.

On 3/16/2017 at 7:59 AM, TERRYH said:

We typically use the surface finish constant scallop to finish most not all of our parts, say we use a 1" ball then for the smaller corners we use say a 1/2" ball what tolerances do you guys use in this situation we typically use .0005 to .001 and I know the larger the tolerance the less it will actually do. I done this on a recent part and did the left over from 1" to 1/2" then a 1/4" balls, the 1/2 did a great job yet the 1/4" did some funky wavy cuts and jumped all over the place in areas it really should not have been looking at. Kind of confusing when we use the same process over and over and it does well one time and crap the next with the same settings.

That just seems to be the nature of Mastercam.   I run into this sort of thing all the time cutting mold detail.  There is no fix that takes care of everything.  I found that changing boundary to center and reset my upper and lower limits sometimes gets rid of some of the crazy jumping around.  Sometimes I need to add another in between tool (in your case maybe a 3/8 dia. before the 1/4).  Unfortunately this legacy toolpath still works way better that some of the newer rest toolpaths.  Another beef I have with leftover is the fact that MC does not seem to be aware of exactly how much stock is leftover and when a small tool goes into the leftover area, it gets buried in the stock and sometimes break.  (Can you say how much we need to drop parting line to fix that?)   You have to experiment a lot and hopefully find a work around.   WorkNC did a fantastic job with left over stock 20 years ago.  It's sad that Mastercam is still so far behind with this technique.

I've had this problem on a persistent basis since using 2017.  Exit MC and restart is the only solution I've found.  Maybe MC is expecting us to use some mental powers?

yes this is a bug carried over from X9.

 

You have to press auto then press chain again.

Weird.  Didn't have this problem with X9.  I'll try it.  Thanks.

Seems that every so often 2017 no longer wants to chain.  Yes, I checked level, planes, duplicate entities and so forth.   If I exit MC and restart, voila, achaining I go.  Graphics issues, perhaps?

Thanks in advance