Cimco edit 8 looks kind of messed up in 4K. The icons are tiny and the ribbon menu seems a little skewed. Has anyone figured out how to get it to display normal in Windows 10 with 4K monitors?

I think in their thread mill toolpath, the addition of "end degrees" would be allow them to support it. It would be a modification that would yield a better toolpath. They have start degrees, but the default runs a full revolution and can't be easily shortened. Or it could use arcs instead of circles to drive the path shorter than full circles.

I just hired a guy for 90K (or at least he signed an offer)- I couldn't find a superstar meriting top of the pay scale who didn't want to work from their home, and this guy liked the scope of work and asked for 75 matching his current job, and I pushed it to 90 in hopes of getting a solid effort. I'd prefer to make parts and programs we can run again, and have the guy work out, than to fail and have to hire again. I never used a Chook. I think the name itself kind of implied it was more involved as a process than clicking a toolpath. The name doesn't mean particularly anything to my layperson mind. I somewhat get hung up on pictures that don't mean anything and words that don't suggest anything. If Chooks were just toolpaths, and they were located under a "less used toolpaths" button I would have probably taken a look at them by now. I've watched about 2/3rds of Streaming teacher videos. Maybe eventually I'll see one related to Chooks. You're right in that I do have a desire to be able to use the software. I guess it would be more like ideal for one person to be able to use it all effectively. It would be cool to be that person.

I'm submitting a patent on the part I had to do ridiculous crap to post. It's not conventional but also not that crazy of a part, but it's not been done in my industry before. I probably should wait to submit it and re-visit it later.

I ran into a similar situation trying to cut an interrupted multi index thread in mill turn. apparently the curve edge spline isn’t recognized as an arc to output smooth arc moves, but if you thread mill and convert the toolpath to geometry (something I haven’t ever done) and do some other savanti bullxxxx to select part of the helix and then toolpath that, it will be a work around that allows thread milling less than entire g12.1 full 360 helix initial moves? I’m not skilled enough to know that method, but if they simply had a “end degrees” check box in thread milling, it would allow the same to be derived from start and end degrees as if Mastercam wanted the user to derive function from the tool. these may be the issues making it difficult to staff Mastercam positions with qualified applicants at my company. We need some jenie when applicants are just people with eyes and a brain like me trying to use the software as if it was setup to help a customer succeed. hooks are also weird to me, like someone at Mastercam is treating software like an old video game with cheats and hacks squirreled away for people who play video games in Monaco. Hiding functionality or deriving it from an unusual number of extra operations is counterproductive.

I guess on the right side of the dialog, in smoothing settings, you can force line moves to be smaller than what Shopware help got me. I guess I could have gone to .0005" if I wanted. It wouldn't be as smooth in the control or as fast as the two arc with Z moves I have now, but it would cut with better quality than the original .004" moves. Not as good as two arcs though, two arcs are smooth moves. This is an improvement to thread milling that should exist- the ability to recognize a 2D arc and apply a helix on that move only from the centerpoint for ID or outside for OD threads.

I did do the config edit upon seeing your post, before calling Shopware and they were able to tell me this was a parasolid issue with 2020. The stock display wasn't a solution because my software again was acting strange. When I drew a box and extruded that to make the stock model, that solid responded normally, so it was simply the bounding box solid which didn't display properly. I called last week with an issue of toolpath editor not displaying the backplot wires and again it was, "Oh you're lucky to have these odd problems we can't solve." Which I can appreciate I guess. I trial and error counted moves to edit feed in a corner in toopath editor blind without the display. It still worked and I was able to post the file with the slower feed in the corner. I used it because I wanted to attempt to bring it into the scope of things I understood about the software, and upon initially looking at it I just thought, I think this is supposed to show backplot like geometry which I guess it is supposed to do. I think my issue with the chaining was that I had the plane and the clicked Z depth at very slightly different heights so they looked together but were not. That CAD drawing methodology of select a plane, select a 2D or 3D mode, click Z and click a value for depth, is pretty easy to mess up. I like the easy Solidworks click sketch, click a face and draw something that looks like a sketch and then dimension and relate it. Topsolid has even nicer functionality where the drawing scales from the first dimension added- but they ruined that with the forced PDM which hides/takes hostage of the files in a strange storage system in the fragile windows architecture. If I had a better working knowledge of 3D chaining methods, I could probably use that to sketch less in mastercam. Sorry about the post reply strangely appearing here. I saw this little notification popup and used the reply function on it and that stuff posted here instead of in those native posts.

I found Mastercam 2020 thread milling in Mill-turn to be a little lacking as it pertained to multi-index threads. This post details the closest thing to a solution I was able to find. I had a part I designed that I needed a multiple index thread on. Thread milling allows the start angle call out, and linking parameters allows a a very small value like .018" to be the top of stock to depth, but the program outputs a full 360 helix disregarding the linking parameters which are calling for ~18% of a helix. So I tried to cut a spline in 3D contour lieing and saying the tool was an end mill with the major diameter of the thread mill (a single linear arc with different Z start and end) and it output that in dozens of linear moves (not one single arc move). That was a very hard geometry to draw as far as I know in mastercam, I made the line using 3D curve on edge from a solid model. I called Shopware and they messed with arc filter settings to get smaller facets (more points). This improved the quality of the thread, but not to a point of being ideal- the smallest moves I could get were about .004" per facet and the result looked like a less than ideal cut finish, because it essentially reflected the curf of the .5" diameter tool on the .004 linear moves. I would have liked like .001 facets ideally. These filters could really benefit from the ability to actually smooth a cut by outputting arcs in G12.1. I then drew a flat arc and used 2D contour. I posted it to Cimco edit 8, backplotted the G12.1 using fanuc mill to see the arc moves. Unfortunately the move was comprised of two arc moves in different quadrants in G12.1, so I had to design a compass in Solidworks 2D sketch, extrude that, bring it to a drawing in 1:1 size, print that at the identical diameter to Cimco on the screen (10.490 displayed diameter), and overlap that on the screen with the lights off. From this I was able to derive the split was ~4 degrees of the arc. I did math to find the Z of the helix, over the 4 degrees and the other ~63.XXXX degrees and added the Z difference to each G12.1 move of the arc. This was the highest quality version of the triple index thread I was able to cut using Mastercam, because now it output the arc in an arc move that could helix with the addition of the Z values. Hopefully this can help someone until Mastercam can support thread milling on a portion of an arc. I guess I also could have gone to the crazy interpolated C diameter derived feeds of Fanuc and attempted to do something, but sometimes the degree callout reverses the rotational direction of the chuck in these cases, so I felt posting it was smarter than standing in the door of the machine with sharpy marker on the part and trial and error posting C moves and going to a calculator to derive the feed moves on the C lines. Granted if I had known it was going to be as tough, I may have attempted that. Y axis would have simplified it, but I was trying to balance cutting on a twin path machine. I ended up making the part in 3:58 run time, with ~ 15 total seconds of imbalanced cutting between the paths. The balancing was handled in Cimco edit 8 after timing actual cutting. I had another C axis G12.1 dynamic milling path cutting 52 seconds, that actually picked up 12 seconds of advantage from G05.1 smoothing settings. It was the first time I had noticed fanuc smoothing effect a run time.

That video was pretty sweet. Thanks for that. Where did that come from? Are there more official Mastercam videos available somewhere?

I've found a slight weakness of the classic chaining approach to be areas that have two radii melting away from the machining region on a diameter. It doesn't seem to like air classic chains like you posted which were mostly what I liked to do for those in those cases. I only used the classic chains because I kind of suck at drawing in mastercam CAD. Thanks to the above poster for the video link, I'll check that out. I did watch some streaming teacher videos Sunday and saw them using some of the icon buttons on the solid chaining menu in conjunction with 3D checked to grab whole surfaces as avoidance regions. They were making it look fairly user friendly to machine without geometry creation. I never realized the icons had that utility. Maybe I didn't have 3D checked or something.

I guess that's a known issue in 2020 with an import on parasolid. I called Shopware and they said they had experienced the bright red parts that can't be color cleared. I really hate the color red so it was just screwing with my mind, and the color select being a near identical red was equally frustrating. I guess I chose the wrong solid type to import.

I'm not 100% sure they were drawn in the same C-plane. So you might have got me there. The boundary op unfortunately goes to a selected Z height and I guess maybe I should have made a plane from geometry on the boundary sketch to ensure mastercam could handle it. I wish there were planes to be selected like Solidworks, but I get how Mastercam has no plug in to bring Solidworks into mastercam. The alternative bringing mastercam to soldiworks makes all the functionality different so the guy no longer knows how to run mastercam in solidworks, so it's a training issue in either direction, involving my incompatibility rather than a nice solution that makes life easier.

Jparis- I was super excited about that idea, I went to config and it was checked wrong. I switched it to entity, clicked the solid part to select, right clicked cleared colors, clicked to select, right click to change solid color. It didn't change. So it didn't work but it was a nice tip and I was hopeful about it. I have a phone interview for a programmer in 6 minutes. After that I'll call Shopware on this embarrassingly simple problem. Also as it pertains to stock shading, I tried that last night also, that stock didn't change to solid, it stayed translucent and non-clickable, it didn't show up as an entity in the levels manager, and couldn't be sorted to a level or transformed to a level because the software didn't recognize it as existing to be selected.

I used dynamic milling today a couple times, I tried making chains by abbreviating a silhouette boundary to clear material to different stock depths. It didn't like that. It kept telling me the avoidance geometry was an open chain. I ended up making chains one for each depth operation from scratch even after extending and trimming and even replacing some of the lines endpoint to endpoint it was still saying they were open chains. I was trying to train a guy and it was typical Mastercam was making itself look as difficult as it is. I think he was pretty discouraged.

Yeah I tried the clear all colors with those selected, and it all stayed locked red. It was a parasolid file. Maybe I should have used solidworks? The opaque stock out of the bounding box solids operation was a joke. I finally just drew a square and extruded it and built a stock model and found myself wishing I had done that a lot sooner. Looking at the red parts and clicking them to another color of red nearly identical was really annoying though. It was almost completely distracting.

I have this same problem in 2020. The solids came in red I've got a migrane and I'm totally xxxxed and it pisses me off so bad. I also made a bounding box solid and it's opaque and I can't select it because it won't allow that to be clicked. When I click the red things they turn a different color of red which is terrible and xxxxed up, but when I click on the created stock solid it doesn't change the hue of red so it's just like not there.

I'm getting forced into some mill programming here, so I'll try what you're talking about if I have a part that uses a stock model and can utilize a dynamic path. I've mostly to date been in mill/turn bar fed machines that can get away without stock models most of the time. I watched the streaming teacher videos on stock models on Sunday and I'm going to probably be using them more programming mills. I had a few hours of stock model training once, but honestly its easy to forget it not using it much hence the refresher.

I found a "hack" which was to use dyamic mill for rough, and copy, paste, and change the chained geometry combination to something compatible with dynamic contour to attempt to have something like an efficient and logical tool that could rough and finish without multiple interactions. The only issue there was that dynamic contour seemed less dynamic than 2D contour. You have less control of the lead ins and outs on the finish if it's "dynamic contour" so you lost some control for the easier "hack" if you will to the dynamic mill not having an ability to finish for itself. It would be cool also to have the dynamic mill be able to finish with a choice of walls only or walls and floors, and also to be able to control the leads on the wall finish portion independently, kind of like a lathe grooving path where you choose finish leads independently from the groove roughing strategy.

Dynamic Contour disables the air chains so it isn't stock aware, and for that compromise you get a finish pass in the operation, so it just behaved for me exactly like 2D contour- nothing dynamic about that. Then I jump to dynamic milling and I can put in an air chain but it won't allow the finish pass in the operation so you need another operation. It has a lot of room for improvement.

The Mazak isn't brand supported by a dealer that cares about us in Wisconsin. Mazak phone support isn't functional. The guy who knew it wasn't sharing information about it, and the post I have is a 3 axis post that outputs A0.0 C0., so at a point you just realize you're working too hard to understand a brand that isn't better supported than Fanuc, or more efficiently programmed or operated than Hurco. I could invest $6500 split between mastercam and Mazak in understanding it, but if I just buy a Fanuc machine from Doosan, Ellison will support me because they are good to do business with, and then we'll have zero spent toward Mazak or Mastercam, and have no headhache or training obstacles. I have to spend some small amount of time with my family. I'm in the middle of putting together 4 patents right now, and I have to rank things on a scale of whether they matter or not. If we keep the lights on without the Mazak running, it should just get off the floor so we can put a profitable machine where it sits.

If anyone wants a 2015 VCU 500A-5X I have one in 100% working order for 90K$ It has lower hours, like 2000. It represents a machine that costs ~$240,000 to buy from Mazak new. We just don't like Mazak, don't have a post for the machine, or a person who likes or understands Mazak. We want to get back to Fanuc. We're a Fanuc shop, the Mazak employee hire was a mistake.

Also Top Solid sucks. I'm not really fond of Mastercam but given the choice, it's Mastercam everday of the week.

I got the post today. I haven't had time to look at it but when I can I will. I don't know why guys conjecture but I didn't contradict myself on the post Colin. I appreciate my friend finding the time around managing a shop, dealing with HR, and a family (all like I have to do also), because I know a life of spinning plates isn't that hot. Its stupid to have a forum and lock so many posts. So far I've had 2 posts and both have been locked. Maybe go to England where people don't have free speech. It's bullxxxx to do this crap in America where we have it. You make Google look libertarian. By the way I have $1500 worth of in house solutions Mastercam books (stacks several feet high), so I'm a customer and this forum apparently has some affiliation to that so I've been a customer.

If I get an open source post out of this deal that runs, I'll trade it like a pokemon card just to prove it can be done. All I'll need is to have it, and for someone to ask for it. It's not cheap to ask for help for someone I paid to do something because I respect his time and that he's human. I wouldn't be here, if I could get the exact post that I know runs because there would be no reason to buy one through a developer who will run it through a test and look at the code.

Well like I said, if you had Mazak application people post code to the machine with a Mastercam post that runs, you can't buy that post anyway (or at least can't verify it to be the same), so it's irrelevant. The reseller might pull a post off the shelf in an undeveloped state, or tell you they can't sell you that version that you have experience with. If the post is going to require prove out, they shouldn't sell the post, and should just sell the development package instead. I didn't solicit this deal I'm talking about in the thread, but it was attractive to me because the guy who was offering it, had experience running the machine, so the understanding was that he would be communicating with himself, so I wouldn't be involved in developing the post. When a customer has two identical machines that don't operate the same, the right answer is to flip the corresponding parameter or change ladder logic so that they run the same. It's far easier to work with the machine tool builder or Fanuc to resolve that kind of stuff than to run 2 different posts on 2 identical machines. In manufacturing if you have 2 or 3 of the same machine, you want to be able to walk one job from one machine to another in the event that the originally proven combo is running another job one of our 2100SY II's wasn't properly mirrored during install so we shored that up this morning with Ellison. None of those issues affected cutting motion- one of them was an air-blow parameter flipped causing the spindle synchronization to fail (wringing the part) in part transfer, but both our 2100SY II machines had that issue on delivery and we edited that behavior in both.