Matt, one other thing we used to run into and still do is if it's a carbide tool post in the tool setter look real close at it and see if you see small pitting from the tool to post (carbide to carbide). We'd see this quite often and have to pull the post and re-grind them flat. One other option is to move the tool to different placements randomly to see if your getting different measurements.

what kind of material and operations are you looking to do? Steel, graphite, plastics or aluminum..., Milling, drilling everyting...rigid tapping? most milling in my experience especially in micro machining the rpms don't matter as your machine moves will never allow you to achieve optimal feedrates. You have to consider what will cover all your needs, but if you into any kind of small hole drilling then your looking at another beast and could need up to 80k spindle speeds. One application I had run across in the past was we were working on MP35N material, milling and drilling with .016 bullnose em and drilling with .008" drills. we had mounted a 40k NSK spindle speeder in our mori which got us by but that was up until we got our 80k in for the drilling. But on another hand when we set the machines up originally and were doing test cuts for using the look ahead I programmed one the hs sample parts from mc to a feed rate of 999 IPM for an aluminum block. We ran it and it never achieved anything above 300 ipm. That's just an example per se, your requirements should drive what you need more than anything. your budget sounds right though you lucky dog =)

Got it Thanks!

We're close Z, I was shown this a long time ago (or so it seems =), sorry Roger P. I should have taken better notes). You can edit the values also by working inside the control def I believe or so I'm trying also. I was shown once how to export the text file out and re-import but I'm missing something else.

I'm looking for if there is a way to limit the options when a user is selecting their drill cycle options in the operations page. Does anyone know of an easy way to do this? I thought there was a way to do it but I can't recall it. Thanks in advance! Brad

All depends on what you're looking to do and what you can spend I would advise. If money were no object then Agie, if price and tolerance come into play then I would advise you start looking into how much maintenance each require and especially ease of programming. Service is priceless, if you have local service that's a huge benefit if they are prompt and reputable. Take your time if you can and test drive them all hands on. If not at least try to get the reps to do a webinar and go through an actual part setup and program something you need done not one of their demo programs. Good Luck !

Rstewart, the VFOE I ran in the early 2000's had ceramic bearings. it was the neatest thing to see the static charge build and jump from the cutter to the graphite trodes because the head wasn't grounded as well due to the ceramic bearings. Opps, I should say the cutting tool to the head wasn't grounded.

If I recall correctly it should show or ID of the pc that is currently using a license (all of them and which license they have checked out) so if you know who's using which pc you should be able to identify them. Understandably if the pc's are used by mulitple people with different logins then it's a different story. Also if you're setup as the administrator for the hasp LM service you can turn off the hasp and start it again...but that kicks everyone off...but I think it gives them the option to save also... There's someone more knowledgable than me on this that hopefully will chime in.

Also rename them after you tweek them to avoid any updates overwriting default file names.

I worked with Mike B. while at Guidant/Boston Scientific before he went off to work his families business. I'd recommend giving him a call and feel free to say I refenced you for what that may be worth =) I hope he can help you, best regards Brad Struemke http://www.besttechnologyinc.com/ Best Technology Inc. 13105 35th Avenue North Minneapolis, MN 55441 Phone: 612.392.2414 Email us: [email protected]

Also it greatly depends on your part geometry,control and indexer. One of the items you have to consider besides if it can do what they show is how'd they get to the finish passes. It's pretty kewl to watch the rotary and cut path as it walks the finish but the first question that hits my mind is "what happened to the slugs"... Very powerful tool if you have the option on your machine and the work for it. It can be typically hand coded also unless your into some pretty heavy multiaxes geometry.

Well I have to give credit where it's due and Roger Peterson at Prototek (our reseller) just taught us this a couple weeks ago. I'd been banging my head for a long time using older tool paths and he brought up this one. I know Roger if you read this you showed it to us years ago, what's the old saying about teaching old dogs new tricks... Glad it worked! Brad

Another possible option may be surface finish blend. In some instances flowline may not give you a matching flow across the surfaces depending on the UV's and this will do it for you. Which version of MC are you running by chance?

Try it once (manually code it), just be sure to set your work offset Z also. Do a dry run test cut on nothing to see what the machine will do. If you can come up with a process/code format you like then you can look at having it coded into the post processor if you wish. This would be really neat if you are doing this repeatedly over and over, man your poor operators will love you if you get this dialed in for them. You may even be able to code the post processor to prompt for a Z move when posting or not.

depending on your tolerances I'd go for a 2d pocket & contour projected to a suface using a bullnose endmill. If you need to be technical the undercuting of the geometry to a normal Z direction in the file shows the groove walls with a .0006" undercut which again if it's tight tolerance stuff you'd need a 5axis machine or secondary setup and fixturing. doing the above you'll get close and closer if you go with smaller tooling for a finish cut around the outside of the pocketing. you could even add in a ball endmill with just enough fine stepovers contouring out to the od withing the 1st cutter diameter to take it to the limit.

My opinion is your going to have a lot more variables to consider than just those. What kind of conditions are you facing: variable thickness material flushing wire type / diameter oh there's more =) If you could change any of those to optimzie and run a constant feedrate is it worth the change or is it a one of a kind job that you could leave unattended and eat the cost of the wire not necessarily the operator time/handling expense? We only use fixed feedrates here for a very specific cases otherwise the servo gain will actually give us more when it can than if we left it at a static rate. That of course is on our Makino's SP43's.

I'd recommend work with just one half of the model to start with even the hub center. Next create an extension of the the prop geometry by either taking the end curve of it and projecting it to a center plane and then surface it. Once that is done go through the steps of closing all that to a solid body whatever way you see fit. Create your hub (remember only half of it), even as a whole solid shaft. Do a boolean solids add and join the two solids. Then go back and add your fillet if it works. Rotate the geometry 180 to create the whole prop, boolean add or use as two solids at this point. Always make copies when doing the boolean add also so you retain your original work.

Read the help section on a swept 2d toolpath. Easy and basic as it gets next to what Ron said also.

Greg, how about the Blade expert file in the Mill samples file? C:\Users\Public\Documents\shared Mcamx6\mcx\mill\samples\inch\Multiaxis\7 CUSTOM APPLICATIONS\BLADE EXPERT INCH.MCX-6 At least that's the file on my PC ;-)

Roku Roku's had a broaching option years back for example on cutting electrodes to do sharp internal corners. If i recall correcly it was a canned cycle that did more or less what's described above.

Expensive YES. For our R&D we put the indexer and also purchased a 3R rotary spinner on one of our Makino's and they've proven to be some of the most impressive items for us. Basically our dream teams (designers) will come up with items and have them SLA's or 3D printed here and then we get to make them. I think we've all heard the next statement "here it is just make it like this part it works".... so we do. The accessories simply save us having to make complicated fixturing which saves us time and time is money. Also giving us quality at the same time. As for the carbide... no idea other than shock impact/toughness. It's one of those things that when questioned you'll hear "well this is how we've always done this". nuff said =)

Yea, it's all relative. some designer or engineer will come up with a dream of needed more "strength" to a tool because it's chipping (carbide dies in 70RC D2 bases) so they make them 2" thick and draw them with those tolerances..... no thought about maybe it needs more lead in or clearance till the cut area to reduce binding... then it's the whole knack of how to install the roller cages so they truly are "zero clerance" bearings with no hangups. It's an art in itself that i'm glad i don't have to deal with directly but just support. awhile back we were having the issue of should we be press fitting our carbide dowels or going for a .00015" slip fit and putting a threaded end on them to retain them. i wrote up some programs to cut threads onto our carbide dowels using our 4th axis indexer on our one wire. worked slick as ever but we never went down that road. was still fun making the threaded carbide dowels and it only took minutes to do it.

Del, it's .001" material that I'm not sure I can disclose publicly what it is but if it's not held that close for a tolerance it simply tears and does not cut clean. Thankfully the dies are yes smaller otherwise it would be an even more dreadful experience.

was it called out in GDT? is it related to a datum at all? Are the prints related or called to any ANSI spec's or does the customer have custom callouts? sorry more questions to your questions tom =), but i'd agree it would look to be an area specification for the tolerance.

A few other items to consider are material, thickness (or varying thickness), wire, setups/flushing off the top of my head. Del is correct, we were even using a surface profilometer to measure the cuts our charmille was making at one time to measure .00001" changes they were going for in some of our dies. then we got a zygo white light to measure items =) Most of our dies need to be in the .0001" range for clearances, yes that number is correct unfortunately =(