Thanks Mike, I have loosened the total tolerance ( I had tightened it right up ) and it is a lot better. Tinny

Jay/Everyone I have tried the project-blend but that produced a toolpath with a very good finish, but had a large file size. It may be the geometry I used for the blend. I will tinker futher. I had a lot more success with the flowline. Like I said earlier the toolpath was starting at the "normals". If I rotated the surface 60deg to a place where the tool could not get to, it behaved well. Better still was an open surface rather than the full diameter crated before. My only complain now is that the tool stutters around the chamfer slightly. My file is not one I can share, I can strip out everything but the few surfaces concerned, and post later when I return home. Many thanks to all of you for the assistance Tinny

on further reflection could this be because the "normals" start in the 12 o'clock position? Tinny

Hi, my total tol for the parallel finish was 0.05mm, filter ratio of 2:1. Material is aluminium. I will try tightening it up tomorrow. The flowline was wierd because I am generating a stepped diameter with a 2 mm chamf with a ballnose and the toolpath would start at the 12 o'clock postion, run down to 3 o'clock position, then retract, move to 9 o'clock and feed to 12 o'clock. Tinny

Hi Guys, I have a problem where I am doing a surface finish parallel over multiple surfaces on a part model supplied by the customer. Sometimes the surface finish is "rippled" with some very small gouges into the faces it is meant to blend into. Anyone else have this problem?? I have created one surface with the same result. I have tried a Flowine but this produces wierd results with the tool forever retracting off the job! Help!! Tinny

Bruce, as long as you set the tool plane to bottom, then all will be well. The problem I find with all this is I have to attack the part from multiple sides, so keeping track of all the tool plane numbers is a nightmare. I always set a new WCS for every toolplane and name the view. Rob

Bruce, if you are using the same datum, then there is no need to touch the origin button at all. I am in the same boat as you, if I get a problem I cannot post it onto the FTP because of the sensitive nature of the parts I am making. :-( Rob

Bruce, unless you are actually locating the part on a already machined face and you need to use a different datum, I would leave the origin button well alone. If you have turned the part over, create a new wcs for that view, and use the same datum if you can. Do you have a file you can upload onto the FTP? Tinny

Bullines, yes, turning OpenGl off has cured my problem. I am now able to run top quality STL files with no problem. Thank you very much Tinny

Hi Guys, If I reduce the quality to halfway, the problem dissappears, so guess it is hitting a limit somewhere. Support at 4D was able to reproduce the same problem on thier PC's (they had run the file with quality halfway and reported no problem) and suggested it was the size of my file, it was rather big through necessity. Many thanks for the help Tinny

Hi Guys, I am having trouble verifying a part within mastercam Trusolids, it crashes or does not complete the toolpath even though the percentage runs to 100%. I have got onto the guys at 4D Engineering my MC resellers and they can verify no problem at all with my file. I am left wondering if it is the Nvidia card. All the other PC's in the office are similar spec and give the same results. Any advice?? PC is Pentium 4 3Ghz, 1Gb RAM,Nvidia FX5200 Latest drivers installed. Many Thanks Rob

Hi Guys, I know some of you out there have Mazak Variaxis 500's. My problem is this; We do a lot of 3d generation of features and the programs are getting too big to fit in the "standard Programs" area of the m/c memory, Where we edit and prove out. I have rung Mazak and thier solution was to run from Standard programs and split the tools into sub-routines called on the Hard drive. This seams a bit messy too me. We need the capacity to jump in and out of the program at will. Any thoughts? Tinny

Dave/Diarmuid, I had a quick look before going home, and the only thing I could find is in the back of the Mazak programming manual. I will look futher tomorrow. A word of warning though, the post processor required to do this was supplied by Cimco, and it wasn't cheap. It is more suited to a medium/large company maybe???

Dave, I will try to find something for you. I know Mazak themselves said we are about the only ones in the UK using it. Rob

hi, you guys must do it differently to my company. We tend to use a lot of jigs and fixtures which wont go onto the machine in exactly the same place the next time the job is issued again. We use G54.2 ( dynamic compensation ) in the post and all the operator does is set the new datum ( in the dynamic comp page in the work offsets )as he would with a 3 axis and the machine works out where it is in the workspace in all 5 axis. Rob

hmmmmmm, are you using the dynamic compensation??

sorry forgot to say, its a cimco post MPMAZ5, the executable is CP5v91 if that helps ;-) Rob

Hi All, I have just been promoted from the shop floor and have been lumbered/thrown in at the deep end programming a Mazak Variaxis 500 5axis milling machine. My question is this.....can you get the post processor to output a tool description at the start of the program on the lines of... ( T1 12mm cybermill ) ( T2 8mm ballnose ) ( Ect ) Many thanks Rob