I can identify with this situation. I had one guy who would regularly say the programs were rubbish, or not good even if a good part came off - saying " I dont like how it does that!". I would ask what he would do instead, but he would never give any good ideas himself. Another guy would edit out bits in the program to remind himself at a later date that he had editted that program. He would quite often edit at the retract heights when the program ran ok as it was, and would sometimes miss the decimal points causing the machine to crash. Sometimes he would get a good part off after proving out a new program and then edit it with mistakes for a operator on the next shift to come in and run. If a feed rate was too fast for him ( even if it ran ok ) he would spend quite a few hours editting all the feedrates slower!! Needless to say this guy is now in other employment within the company and lost all the overtime that he enjoyed doing. Even with all his obvious failings he thought he was really good, and anything we posted out was never perfect.

If you want to show people what can really be done with Mastercam point them in the direction of the Nasmyth stand, and our Airbus fuel pipes ;-). All the guys at Bulwell Precision are proud of what we have achived with the help of Mastercam.

I have brought this up up my Mastercam reseller. Its a bug and will be fixed with the MR1 release. Its the many bugs like this that has made me go back to V9. I can't be forever scratching my head trying to figure out why it won't work when I need programs out.

quote: A seamless transition to a total rewrite of the software. Who was telling you that? We had a seminar on the upcomming release of MCX earlier this year. A guy from CNC software stood in front of us and told us it would be. You should never belive what strangers tell you.

We have 3 seats of Mastercam and we are all displeased with it. I have used it the most, but I still find the interface cumbersome, and at times baffling and illogical. In my opinion MCX have been far removed from the seamless transition it was hyped to be. Most baffling to me is the apply and end chain icons - exactly the same, whats that all about?

I do a lot of 5 axis programming, I will have a look at your file when I get home. Are we talking about 3+2 moves where you do a 3axis toolpath, and the table just indexes to the right position and locks in place? If so, basically your wcs needs to be the same view as you are setting it on the machine. It dosn't have to be the top view. If you are 90 deg out in the wcs view for example , then it will produce the wrong angles. Your t/c plane is more than likely right.

Hi everyone, the file I am currently working on comes with with a window saying "invalid arguement" when I try to spin the view dynamically. When I try to save the file I get a memory error. I have 1gig of memory. Has anyone else come across this? I am using mcx sp1 update 3

Thank you all for your support. Yes I am from Nottingham, England. And yes we always use metric now. ( I myself was brought up using a proper measuring system - Inches ) I have tried re-creating the surface, and It no longer crashes. I have 1 gig of ram, another workstation has 2 gig and both have the same problem. I have tried re-running the same toolpath with a filter tol. of 0.01 ratio 2:1 and get much better surface finish results.

Hi, The toolpath based on a spline is not a huge problem now. It is the surface contour toolpath using the helix option. When I tighten the tolerances to less than 0.02 then MC crashes. MCX does not crash but will refuse to generate a toolpath nci. I tried the settings suggested by BernieT but it took 2 1/2 hours to do the toolpath but crashed at the end!! My MC reseller is looking into this but I thought I would tap into the knowledge on this forum. I cant post the file because it is sensitive but I will try to recreate it.

I am indeed running v9.1 We have X but are waiting for a modified cimco post. BernieT when I tighten the tolerances as suggested MC crashes. We get this problem quite often. I gather your pc's run happily if set to this tolerance? If so then maybe there is another setting we have to change.??

Hi all, I have a problem outputting a program which follows a spline toolpath. The finish will be facetted i.e. a series of flats in stead of a nice curve. I also get the same finish when using a side and face cutter ( its like a dovetail form with radius ) with a surface contour finish, spiraling down a cylinder. I need to improve the finish but how? Many thanks in advance

I have sorted it now. The post processor uses a file called cpv91.dll and this had been overwritten/corrupted. The PC now posts 5 axis moves correctly.

Hi, we are still running V9 at the moment. The problem is we have bought a new PC ( A Dell 380 Pentium D, 3Ghz 2 gig RAM ) It has been doing 3+2 moves fine. However when this PC tries to post a full 5 axis toolpath it crashes to the desktop. The post is a cimco one. I will contact my Mastercam reseller but I thought I would ask - has anyone else come across this problem? Is it the Pentium D ???

I program two Mazak Variaxis 500 5axis machines and one kitamura 3 axis machine I used to work a few years ago that everyone disowns!! Should be branching out to Mazak Intergrex and Matsuura 5ax

Thanks guys, I guess I will have to put up with it untill Mastercam X comes my way, I just hope X doesn't have the same bug

Hi folks, I have a problem that is really driving me mad. I program the job in many views whick I name i.e. socket end, or Angled face ect. For my post to workon 5-axis properley ( at least the way I was shown) I have to change the wcs in each stategy to a common wcs that relates to how the job is set on the mc. When I do this and re-gen sometimes one or other of the wcs's loses its name or turns its self into a system view, and loses any offsets. Anyone else seen this? I cannot post the file onto the ftp because of customer confidentiality. This happens in SP2 and the newest mainetence release.

Hi Guys, I have the c-hook but I dont use it as a wanted a completely indenpendant verification of the g-code produced by mastercam. Vericut dont take that long to set up when you get used to it.

I can't really mail you the file because the part is pretty sensitive. I have tried to recreate it but can't get the same effect so far. I use SFC with follow surface and a spiral limitstepdown both at 2-2.5mm

bump

Hi Everyone, I have done a few spiral toolpaths with surface finish contour- it works a treat. However since upgrading to the latest MR0105 the spirals fail in places. The toolpath spirals down following the surface then plunges in z, does a complete circle, the plunges again ect. Later on in the same toolpath it will commence spiraling again. Another pc in the same office still running 9.1sp2 has no problems. Any ideas? Many thanks Rob

Dolphin, we too had problems with the table and the centre of rotation in the A-axis 0-90deg, it was ok at 0deg and 90deg, but in between would move by 20 microns. The old A-axis before we had it changed was about 70 microns out.

BTW our Variaxis has dropped its pallet 3 times as well ( all by the same operator, I think he doesn't use the cover coolant and swarf builds up on the lifter )

Bruce, we tend to do mostly 3+2 moves. I went to see a Evo50 the other week. VERY nice m/c however when the table is 90deg up you tend to lose 155mm of the stroke of the z axis, so maybe it isn't for us. They have just brought out an indexing m/c ( EMU50?) it is just an indexer, no 5 axis moves, no through coolant, but it is really solid. All for £80,000!!

We have a variaxis 500 and I can say we have had nothing be hassle from it. I was assured that it was just a one off rotten apple, but reading the above I find that hard to belive. In just 18months we are on our third A-axis table, and fourth spindle. We also have problems with the centre of rotation, and the accuracy overall is poor, I wouldn't put a job on the machine with a tolerence of less than +/- 0.05mm. ( good job most of the stuff we do have broader limits ) The situation isn't helped by the poor support and the fact that a Mazak engineer did a G0 into a job and moved the spindle column back 3mm. We are thinking of buying more 5 axis machines, what would ppl suggest? Looking at a Maho DMU 50 evo. To answer the original post we have a cimco post purchased from our re-seller and use Vericut to prove the code before sending to the machine. Expensive, but very powerful.

ok, I think I know what you are trying to acheive. What you have done is correct, however you must tie everything into a common datum. Go into each toolpaths parameters page and click the tool parameters tab, then the t/c plane button. On the right is the wcs plane selection button. Press this button and select your common wcs ( use a top view looking down on the m/c table as it would be on the table that the operator can datum up on the machine. ) You then get a box come up asking if you want to keep the t/c planes as they are, or move them with the new wcs. Select keep them as they are ( default i think ) and the t/c planes move to a silly number, ignore this its ok. Do this for all strategies, and when you post out to the machine all will be fine. I do this every day and it works for me on a Mazak Variaxis 500 attacking the workpiece from a multitude of different angles. I hope you can understand this, I had the advantage of seeing it first hand and still took time to get my head around it.