Hmm. this is really old school thinking with a grain of truth. Kevangels first post does allude to a certain phenomenom that the "Machinist on the floor" talkrd about. that is:cut a heavy single pass slot in one direction only. The end mill "unwind" due to torsional stress. The outer corner of the cutter pulls in to the material more on the conventional side of a slot whereas the climb side pushes away. THink of it this way: walk down the centerline of a snowey road. Keep your left foot pointed out to the left. Your right foot remains strait ahead as you walk. The resulant path would show a slight undercut on the left (direction of travel) wall of your path. the effect of the preceeding tooth of the cutter grabing a little and "unwinding". You would see the opposit effect with a left hand helix, left hand spiral cutter. Completely uncontrollable to accuralty eliminate tapered walls. -Keith from home

quote: i did my masters in princeton university Mr. Bala that is great. Did you like to eat at Hoagie Haven? I do. I keep meaning to buy one of their Tee shirts. From which school did you receive your BS in EE? Proir to your attending Princeton. quote: it doesnt matter where you study its how you study it matters. Point taken. I understand the our President attended Yale! -Keith from home

OK mr. hot shot from the sub-continent. Now that your mommy has paid for you education at some crappy school like Wayne State you need to prove your worth in a real machine shop by answering some basic machine-shop questions. Please remember that your answers will be judged by honest, hardworking, creative, and the most exacting people that you will ever meet. The honest members of this forum. so put up or shut up. [*]How many cranks of a bridgeport handle will give you 8.125 inches [*]what is the difference between a spiral point tap and a spiral flute tap? extra credit: When do you use each? [*]what is a Volstro head? [*]what is the difference in diameter between a #4 machine screw and a # 10 machine screw? [*]Why are Ducati's cool? [*]are you in the same league as Randle XX and Sausage? [*]Googleing answers will loose points These questions are really easy for a machine shop guy so we all have the utmost confidance in you. Remember to consider your answers carefully as most of us have forgotten more than you'll ever know. Are you up for the challenge? -Keith

verify where in space your origin is. perhaps it is not at Z0. -Keith from home

quote: (6) Abundantly, he can use Shift+Printscreen keys, and save the contents of the screen onto a slide of MS-PowerPoint file *.ppt . the more i think about this i'm convinced that i would use alt-printscreen instead -Keith from home /yawn

greets Skyline, you have taken a big first step in learning MasterCam by joining this forum. With the right approach too. you could, of course, tried to take the Mr. Deepak-R approach for getting help (click it, its a link) but it is clear that you really want to learn, the right way. welcome -Keith from home

We had a request from a scientist here at work to produce a pile of cast iron chips (he called them filings). No problemo. I just dropped the quill stop on my trusty bridge port and let that drill bit just bore its way right down into the tabletop! Scooped up the chips. put em in a box . "here you go sir". Service with a smile! Damn is Bridgeport looking a little ragged lately. Hmmmmmm. j/k THe request for Iron chips is true 'tho. Happened yesterday. Our raw stock guy got out a cast iron bar and set it up in a band saw. another satisfied customer! we get some weird sh!t -Keith from home

Hello Rolf! Welcome to the Forum I seem to remember that Win '98 had some usb issues. I think that there is an update utility that may help you out. I cant remember what it was and Microsoft no longer supports win '98, So: I'm hoping that all me forum friends will pitch in here and solve your problem. I really think that there was an update from Micosoft for USB stuff. -Keith from home

Sorry, It wont ever look like a real raised panel

Generally a QC position at a software company is the same as at any other company that puts a product out the door. 'tho there is internal and external so . yeah. speculation is prolly pretty close Hey threept82. You better watch yourself around Salem. My sister is a District Attorny there. But tell me this. Why do you say that your Not Far from Salem, when your sig says that you are for Western Mass.? /confused -Keith from home

Mark, Long time, no hear..... Hmmmm. be sure "top of Stock" is set to what is really happening with the part. Set "Feed PLane" to -incremental-, really close to start of cut. More for Big Chips, crappy machine, 3 axis moves.... ps ? why 2"? are you clearing clamps? pss. man your shop is close. i got to get over there. MayDay. to answere the question in you sig. I think thst the lathe came first. -Keith from home

I have Pro/E Wildfire 2.0 and MasterCam 8.1.1 at work. The more I use wildfire the more I like it. The CAM side is still sucky. They added a module feature called "Expert MAchinist" and it seems as though it was done for those that dont know much about machining. At least that is the impression I got from reading the docs. Ir has a slighly different interface that helps you choose the appropriate machining sequence. FAcing, profiling, slotting, pocketing (limited options)..... ect. I guess that it is really macros with a gui overlay. It works, (shrug). I still use MCam for most of my toolpathing but i often remodel a part in Pro/E for fun. It is pretty easy really, given the proper TRAINING! I got a full week in wildfire 1.0 and 3 full days in the Sheetmetal module. -Keith from home

more on Tool Libraries when i get to work and can relax. Im trying to get the kids ready for school now. 7:20 am -Keith, The Iron Chef, from home

just use absolute Z and touch off the tools for each job. no biggie. this is fine for single setup jobs. multi-offsets may require a separate Z factor for different fixture offsets. My Z register in fixture offsets has remained at "0" for many years. I also setup and run my own programs do i can keep things organised . -Keith from home

quote: 3) Where went the icons of the woman who was laying on "B" collum on the top buttons in the Mstercam screen, I have searched all over the FTP site. Oh, I think that I upped that to the ftp as "heidi.zip" -Keith from home

quote: When you break out or say when your're facing with an em (like cutting the hat off) you may have to change the cut direction to keep the cutter swinging into the part direction good point +1 Blast the chips away with coolant -Keith from home

Hello Kannon123, Welcome to the Forum Send a .dxf for 2d and an iges for 3d. or do they want to look at the posted code? (yeah, right). you could post a file then reverse post it. save it down in a graphic format (dxf, iges...) and then send them that file plus all the tool offsets! Mwhahahahahahahhaha! where the heck in the world is DECORAH? Im pretty good at geography but i never heard of DECORAH -Keith, from home

Joel how did you sort the holes when you programmed it? You *should be able to force this to work. Is this a transformed toolpath? Im sorry that I cant open the file as I anly have ver 8.1.1 -Keith from home

Or use a slitting saw, SHARP, with air blast -Keith, from home

SHARP tools, air blast. Why no coolant? -Keith, from home

Generally I program like this: Large mill to small mill small drill to large drill segregate hole diameters by color (old school) often add comment to describe operation group similar features(operations)when they are close to the same Z value An extra toolchange or 2 isnt a problem as I generally dont do production runs. I can deal with that issue too, when it arises. When i perform a sequence of drill paths i almost allways choose LAST/EDIT/REVERSE to minimise table travel. and most of all hope that im having a good day. You know. sometimes those programs are just beautiful. just run all day. Then there are "THOSE" days when everyting goes to sh!t -Keith from home

Oh boy the list is long. Isnt it cool to do this stuff? Ah lemme see. Direct TV stuff HDTV stuff Very spooky stuff for the feds Songbird disposable hearing aids Orchid Biosciences ( Dont leave any DNA anywhere ) Horseradish harvester parts Homebilt airplane stuff Princeton Gamma Tech X-ray spectrometer stuff Space station comunnication aamplifier Space shuttle stuff All sorts of cameras M1A1 Tank vision systems the COOLEST virtual reality game system EVAR! it eventally became this company autonomus vehicales ALL kinds of Microwave stuff Ill add to this list when I think of more stuff. Im taking the kids to the batting cage now -Keith from home

Runout is a problem with small cutters. Check it with an indicator. you will have problems with anything more than .0005. tir HTH -Keith from home

Rotary Broaches are the way to go

last four digits of drawing number