+1 Thad Shortcut keys are the way to go!

I agree with Perry, it is so much easier to work with solids.

If you keep your comments to a maximum of 80 characters long that should help.

Ron, What kind of format do you save to your 1000 page book and how do you index this informaion? I currently save these threads as a HTML page on my USB thumb drive. I was just wondering if you are doing something easier. Thanks

quote: I'm not a Haas basher at all, Sorry Chris, I did not mean to insinuate that your were. quote: Not necessarily. The Big 3 automakers in this country saw sales increase many years when their quality wasn't very good because the demand was high and the prices were right.Even Toyota has had quality and recall issues lately. Since time is the only real truth, only time will tell. quote: Haas has also broadened their product line [to their detriment in my opinion] to include HMCs, more lathes, etc, which helps volume quite a bit. I don't agree with that philosophy either. It looks like they are using a page from the car manufactures playbook. .

quote: Sales of Haas CNC machine tools hit an all-time high of 13,663 units in 2007 – an increase of nearly 20 percent over 2006 quote: I hear a lot more complaints about Haas now than I heard five years ago, so I'm not sure I'm buying that. If that were true, Haas' sales should have decreased by 20 percent, not increased. Buy American, the job you save may be you own! .

quote: I'd venture to say 2 of those HAAS would be down for a percentage of the time. That's strictly hearsay your Honor. The last shop that I was in had five Haas machines cutting 304 stainless sixteen hours a day, five days a week. In the six and half years that I was there the oldest of the Haas'(a 1997 VF-3) needed a gearbox in 2007. That machine was down for four days total. Not bad, four days in ten years (99.9% uptime)! The rest of them just kept making parts day in, day out! In 2003, they bought a Mazak Variaxis 500. What a P.O.S.! The Mazak was fast (1900 IPM rapids), but could not hold 0.002" true positions. In other words, this machine would make a lot of scrap for us really fast. Mazak's sent techs out a dozen different times and they could not improve the accuracy of this machine. Mazak verified the problems with ball bar and laser tests and documented everything. Mazak even sent out a guy from Japan saying that if he could not fix it, no one can. Well guess what, he did not fix it! Just for grins, we posted a three axis program for the Mazak and the Haas. We ran the parts and the Mazak part failed inspection and the Haas part pass with flying colors! The Mazak's cycle time was faster, too bad the part was scrap. I guess you can say that our Mazak made scrap faster than our Haas! .

quote: The Haas will hold .001 all day long, but you would be streching it to try and get tenths repeatability.I run a Haas with glass scales and it will hold "tenths" all day! Buy American, the job you save may be your own! (this is where you hear "Stars and Stripes Forever" playing in the background) .

You can say all the bad things that you want to about Haas machines, but the fact remains that Haas sold 13,663 units in 2007. Not bad for such a young company! Some of you think of Haas the same way Japanese car manufactures were thought 1960's. I am will to bet that most of you drive Japanese cars now! Haas continues to improve their machines much the same way that the Japanese inproved their cars. It took the Japanese forty years to get their cars to where they are now. Give Haas another twelve years and everyone will be "driving" a Haas and all the "Mori's, Mazaks, etc." will become the GM's and Ford's of the industry. Buy American, the job you save may be your own! .

quote: O9001(TOOL CHANGE) M9 G0 G28 G91 Z0. M5 G91 G28 Y0. G90 G53 X-22.0 G40 G49 G80 M6 G90 M99 I do something similar for the same reason except that I alias my o9001 program as a M-code (M16 in my case). Since I don't have to do this very often, I just change all M6's to M16's in my machine editor. Or... If you need it every time you post, you can change your post to output your "new" M-code instead of a M6. Mike My Program O9001(M16 TOOL CHANGE) G0 G90 G49 G53 Z0. G0 G90 G53 X-60.0 Y-20.0 (your XY position may differ) M6 M99 .

You should be able to select a solid face as a drive surface. After you select the type of surface that want use, you will see a icon on the toolbar that has a blue block and a green check mark. Select that icon and you will turn on the icons that allow you to select the solid face(s)as your drive surfaces. Do the same for your check surfaces. Hope this helps, Mike

Have you tried; Create -> Creat Solid to 2d Profile

Here are the changes that I made to my post in ptlchg_com to prevent M03 when tapping. if not(opcode$ = 3 & nextdc$ = 3), pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgcode, *sgabsinc, pwcs, pfxout, pfyout, pfcout, *speed, *spindle, pgear, strcantext, e$ else, pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgcode, *sgabsinc, pwcs, pfxout, pfyout, pfcout, *speed, pgear, strcantext, e$ Hope this helps, Mike

If you have macros, you could do this. A double-depth hole drilling macro

quote: well it looks like i wont be able to do this with the post i have. You should be able to. I am using the same basic post that you are. Mine just started out as the sample post for the v9 WCS tutorial. I just re-wrote it for the Haas VR 5axis. Mike

quote: i tried posting it this morning and i can live with deleting all the stuff i dont need but the xy&z values came out for the rotated trunion and not like i get out of the router post.i will have to work at it some more. thanks This is where you have to approach your "plane settings" differently than you do for your Mazak in order to get the correct X,Y, & Z outputs. In addition, you will not be able to use canned cycles, i.e. G81, G83, etc. with your current post. Hope this helps Mike

Mike, You can't really "turn off" your A&C axis'. You will have to just delete all your A&C outputs, (they should post as A0 and C0). You will have to approach your c-planes and t-planes a little differently than you do on the Mazak. You will also have to delete your G61.1 and the other garbage needed on the Mazak and not the Haas. Then go to the misc. values, then misc reals, and set as "90". On the new post that I wrote I don't have to worry about my 4th and 5th axis outputs (A&B in my case) since I am doing this on a VR-11 Haas 5 axis. The other thing I have done to this post is output for a HRT310 Haas rotary as a 6th axis using a misc. interger. The 6th is only positional connected to the RS-232 port. Hope this helps Mike

quote: just wondering if anyone got anywhere with this.im having to do some machining with a 90 deg head on a verticle and had to use a router post to get started and hand write the rest. Mike, You can use the 5axis post that you have to accomplish your programming with a 90 degree head. I have been drilling and tapping the ends of long parts with a 90 degree head here at my new job with the post that I wrote. You just need to go to the misc. values and and set your misc real value. Hope this helps! Mike

quote: As you mention, you could do a formula in Excel to calculate/convert this data. But I'm not sure about handling for multiple rows, unless you repeated the formula? (I'm certainly not an Excel expert) Roger, It's not difficult to do in Excel. Once you write your formula, it's pretty much cut and paste after that, including the formatting for multiple rows. It's amazing what can be done with a spreadsheet. Mike

One more thought, in Excel, you will have to write a trig formula to get your XYZ position (something like you would do to find XY positions for a bolt circle). In your formula you will also have to add your base circle to your lift. All that is left is to export XY numbers from Excel, and import into Mastercam. Hope this helps, Mike

I haven't done what you are trying, but I have imported X,Y,Z co-ordnates from Excel into Mastercam. What I have done is to export the Excel file as a ASCII file (*.txt), then import into Mastercam as an ASCII file. This will get you points that you can create arcs from 3 points. You will have to play with your export formatting, i.e. (1.000, 1.000, 0.000), with X first, Y second, Z third and so on. Hope this points you in the right direction. Mike

You can also set up a misc int to turn it on and off Mike

This is what I use on a Haas. G0 G49 G53 Z4. You can hard code in your post or use a manual entry where needed. Hope this helps, Mike

Thanks Columbo, We will give that a try. Mike

We are getting this error message for our nethasp, "Error Checking out license. All available licenses are in use.", but when we click "OK" Mastercam starts up normally. Anybody know why this error message pops up?