the other point that i have come across is a machine that has been crashed a few times and the ways have moved. they take a while to adjust but i wouldn't be afraid to loosen them and adjust small areas.

6al4v annealed .milling for high speed i would start at 40 sfm.for cobalt 50 or even 60 for coated. i have also roughed slots with 1/2" uncoated carbide. 800 rpm 2 ipm .25 doc. worked well. i have never seen ti ignite on a machine but i saw a guy light a barrel by putting a cigarete in. i believe it burns about 8000 degrees. also i have heard it is very dangerous to put it out with water. something about explosions.

como?

hi, in my own case solids have allowed me to draw much better and faster when it comes to 3d modeling. i used to draw with wire and surface and spent years trying to learn the tricks. back then i had a backup. when i got stuck i could go to my boss who was really good at mastercam. he could generally fix anything that i came across. at the time i didn't know of anyplace to learn how to draw. cad designing wasn't in city colleges yet and you were kind of on your own. i started using solids in version 8. in 6 months of self teaching i could draw better than 15 years of drawing with wire and surface. i think the most trouble i had was the final radii that ususlly completes most models. .015 edge breaks and such. with solids the tricks to making fillets are not easy to find but they are easy to use. for example when a radius doesn't propagate properly you can put a .001 rad here and there and then things come together well. with surfaces there would be many times that i never could fillet surfaces. did i mention that solids are much faster to draw with? i have dabbled in solidworks and it is said to work much better than mastercam but i use mastercam exclusively. billy

control was easier for manual programming. However, shop routines are not changed easily. they could have scrapped many parts in days past for many reasons. i know a shop that still uses center comp for all cnc operations. also the head programmer still uses ver 6. not what i would do but they don't scrap many parts. they have used the same methods for at least 20 years and would probably fire someone for comping to the tip.

the reason i don't use center is that if you change to center you have to change back to tip at some point. it is to easy for me to not notice that setting because i never use it. no big deal until you come back to this file next month and forget to look at it. moving the geometry keeps the program good when you come back this file later. you can always isolate this geometry to a level with a note. this is the way to program 3 axis with level 1 or level 2. you can do many operations that normally require surface toolpaths.

Offset the contour by .5 away from the wall then comp set to center and z-.5 if you don't offset the contour and just set the Z the cutter will move to center on the wall giving you a .5" gouge. i like this method but i will translate z-.5 or whatever the radius on the tool is. what you are doing is creating the center geometry and move it to the tip. if you really want to get creative then use this method with a bull em. it really is the same. you offset geo, move to the center of the tool then down the radius amount.

find in your post "use canned cycles" change to no on the proper cycle # USE CANNED CYCLES? usecandrill : yes usecanpeck : yes usecanchip : yes usecantap : yes usecanbore1 : yes usecanbore2 : yes usecanmisc1 : yes usecanmisc2 : yes

i dont think you will have a problem with the surface speed. just keep it under the melting point. use the shortest cutters you can and if they are still too long then turn down the spindle speed. the material does not finish like metal because of porosity but i have never had had problems with the finish.

i use the parallel surface for almost anything but just watch out for the plunges.

put ,e to end line

to clean the spindle taper, take a tool holder and remove the keys. double back tape 3 strips of emery cloth evenly around the taper. push it up into the turning spindle. i have only used for removing nicks and dings.

i might have to go with cheap spindle also. i never saw this until i started using fadals. i have seen them corrode after half a day. i noticed it is much worse when roughing.

i know many guys that use center drills to engrave. i tried it a couple of times and they last very well. better than engraving tools. i use ball cutters also. they work ok but leave thicker lines.

use analyze dynamic place cursor on area to check

look john. a fadal

"I stopped working for egotistically over the top people yrs ago." first let me say thanks for getting rid of the pic of hilary. it was very disturbing to look at. I would love to be more active on the forum but time prevents me from being more than a daily reader, so i guess i'm a little jealous. finaly, i don't it an ego trip. I think it is more out of desperation. at age 50 i realize that jobs are still readily available most of the time but i want need the control to determine when to retire. so i bought a used fadal. i don't want to end up like a freind of mine who was a top manual machinist but got very ill at age 55. the company we were at let him go after 12 years and I heard it took a year before he could collect his disability. finally I couldn't afford to hire you anyway but maybe soon. peace john billy I

"Me neither but then again I can not think of any advantage to running a Fadal either." because if you can't make money with a fadal you can't work for me. but anyone that can post over 10000 threads, probably on the clock isn't going to work for me anyway. billy

the only time i have used format 2 is for probing. for example. when probing a tooling ball I set up the macro to start with the probe 1 " over the ball. format allowed the machine to start probing without taking off for machine zero at the beginning of the program.

it is not an easy jump. cam part was easier to learn than drawing. you will learn to draw again. you should keep 9 running until you learn x. i thought it was the hardest change since going from v6 to v7. but then i didn't need to learn to draw again. billy

look at ganesh in chatsworth,ca. not bad and not very expensive.

does anyone remember the moog hydropoint? yes the same guys that brought us the moog synthesizer. the blocks were 20 characters long and the reader blew air through the tape. billy

I'm shocked that there is so much division on this topic. this reminds me of the guy who told me that the true position was 1/3 of the tolerance.

I always change the operation defaults.

John, one point that you might not have considered is these machines are constantly being rebuilt and recycled. they are so much cheaper to bring back to life and parts are available. they sell very high compared to many machines the same age. I constantly check ebay for used machines so that is my source of info.