I have a new Dell Precision M6500 laptop with a Quadro FX 2800M video card & running MCX5 MU1 on Win7 x64 that has been doing this as well. I have always had it set to not go to sleep and not turn of display when plugged in which it usually is. When I saw this thread I started to play with some settings to see if anything helped. When I clicked the ! button to customize the status bar the window I got had the txt half covered by the slider. I tried it on my PC and the txt was totally there and readable. I removed buttons I don't use being the attributes and groups by right clicking on the colum and choseing remove. Today I have not yet had my pointer disappear when using the status bar.

We have 4 PC's and 2 brand new Dell laptops in our shop. All are Dell machines with Quadro video cards, the laptops and 1 older PC, (Precision 380) run Win 7 x64 and two 1 1/2 year old Precision T5500's run Win XP x64. The laptops and older PC with Win 7 all have Dell video drivers because I can't get the Nvidia site to give them to me, and all these machines have screens that turn white if they sit idle or we launch Internet Explorer. They also show a completly white pic if you try to use Screen/Copy image to clipboard. The newer PC's running XP can download Nvidia drivers and we have no problems with these machines. To me the problem seems to be that on Win 7 machines we are forced to use Dell drivers which have never worked well for us. Is there a way I can get actual Nvidia drivers on these Win 7 machines?

Caps lock is obviously stuck. The post extension, .pst is also an MS Office personal settings file. I've had this happen to me to. I just cancel the update and I havent had the problem in X5 so I never had to run down a workaround for it. But maybe you could go to the folder options/file types in XP and change it to open with MC or remove it so there is no primary program to open .pst.

I that did what I wanted. Only time will tell. Thanks

We have a HAAS VF-2 with a TC-5 4th & 5th axis head bolted to the table. We are using the Haas VF-TR Series Trunion post processor with MCX5-MU1. If the NC code produced has an A axis value of negative anything, the machine will be cutting on the back side where I can't watch it and if the cutter didnt retract enough, I get a nasty crash. If I make any roughing or multi cut paths, the post tells it to machine alternately on the front side, then the back, then front, etc. Making it so the post only generates positive A numbers will work but if possible I can see uses for limiting A axis to neg. 10° to15° probably in the machine def. So how do I do this?

Everything seems to have a price, can you live with what this cost? In this case you have no rapid movements which renders the 5%, 25%, & 50% overide buttons useless. I tried this but found it to be worse than doglegs. Your results may vary, just be sure to tell your CNC operator they don't work before he highfeeds into big block of Ti64.

We use a speeder head on that kind of thing. It's 5X spindle with 4000 RPM max so we get 20,000 RPM. One thing to check is tool runout. One of our Haas spindles is out .0015 at the tool and on a .030 cutter it will snap off as soon as the cutter touches the material.

I will try that & let you know.

Mine too. I bring in lots of step files from Catia and X5 has locked up almost every time I use simplify.

I like to figure these things out too but sometimes there just isn't enough hours in the day. I know the most about computers & software here so I am the guinea pig when new software is installed. I have to get mine working first so the others don't encounter problems. Your last post says you replaced sgfeed with sgfeed? Your replaced a word with the same word and now it works?

I had the exact same code that Gcode said I should. So what did you change to get the G94 to post at every line with a feed. Cant I have it force an Feedrate at every line with a G01?

Not yet, been playing with the post debugger though but too much going on to concentrate on it.

No good, what you suggest is exactly how my post reads now.

Yes, G94 right beside G90 and it runs. So how do I get it there with the post?

That's what I was thinking too but somehow the machine knew different & the only way I can win a disaggrement with it is to cheat & lie.

Using MCX5 on 5 axis parts for the first time. Post is Generic HAAS VF-TR series 5Xmill.pst with VF-2 & a TC-5 head. I have been running for a day & 1/2 just fine then today a new toolpath comes to a stop because of no feedrate output. It's a 5ax flow path, I will paste the code below but the feed callout is missing on line 138, just before going to inverse time. What can be changed to correct this? % O0001 ( PROGRAM - 09-0128-0400-03-AJPL10039 ) N100 ( DATE - 04-01-11 TIME - 10:35 ) N102 G20 N104 G0 G17 G40 G49 G80 G90 N106 G0 G28 G91 Z0. N108 ( .030C BALL STUB TOOL - 12 DIA. OFF. - 12 LEN. - 12 DIA. - .03 ) N110 M11 N112 M13 N114 T12 M6 N116 G0 G54 G90 X-.0038 Y-5.1161 B97.995 A69.475 S7500 M3 N118 G43 H12 Z2.2129 M8 N120 Z2.0629 N122 G1 X-.0015 Y-5.1339 Z1.9646 F10. N124 G0 Z2.0629 N126 X-.0039 Y-5.1161 N128 Z2.2129 N130 Z2.2308 N132 X-.016 Y-5.1361 N134 B97.659 A69.291 N136 Z2.0808 N138 G1 X-.0154 Y-5.13 Z1.9809 N140 G93 X-.0147 Y-5.1304 Z1.9795 B97.689 A69.307 F999.99 N142 X-.0126 Y-5.1314 Z1.9758 B97.766 A69.35 F976.58 N144 X-.0106 Y-5.1322 Z1.9725 B97.833 A69.386 F976.31

That does what I wanted to. Thanks guys.

I have a part to cut where a standard lathe insert will not work but if the tool holder is rotated about 3 degrees the insert will clear everything and make the needed cut. So how do I rotate an existing tool in MCX5.

quote: Haas Applications Dept uses MC so they can help you outWe have almost all Haas epuip. here & they serve us well but I recently had Haas training on a new VR-8 and they were using MC9. Just be sure to unlock the brake along with inverse time. We have a max rotrary value of 360000° and on our TC5 rotary it must unwind at end of toolpath.

Two 24" dells on 4 dell work stations & a pair of 24" dells on both my home PC's. Our Catia instructors here all have twin 30" dell or HP's.

That seems like it might have worked except maybe I cant do the Huzzah with enough enthusiasm. Kennametal insert A2030N00CF02 and holder A2BNSN32M03 are my numbers & not there in either list so I'm SOL so far on this problem.

I have a bunch of custom mill tools defined so I understand the drawing of a custom tool. How ever I used the grooving tool button, not the custom tool button. MC asks the style and 5 dims to be filled in since I didn't find a matching insert number. Same thing with the insert holder so I filled in all the dims asked for like I would an end mill cutter. I get the same error when I click the draw tool button. So what your saying is if my tool is not a number included in the Kennametal catalog button menu that I must create a custom tool?

I'm setting up to use a Kennametal part off tool and holder that are not in the MCX4 catalog so I have entered all diminsions asked for in the grooving/parting tool windows. MC wont save it and gives error msg. "Only 2 colors(insert and holder) must be used in the MCX custom tool file." WHAT THE HELL? Only dim's were entered, no drawings or colors anywhere.

Thats what we do here too. The only problem has been when the IT guys let MC install to it's default name or on another drive. The install folder must be named exactly the same as the folder copied from for your settings.

Isn't everybody? For a year and a half now.