I've noticed when I need to attach geometry with my toolpaths i will get more geometry if i have the level that the geometry is on active at the time. There's a surface that I need that is in my toolpaths boundary but not used by the toolpaths. If i create a new level and have all my other levels off, create a toolpath nesting operation, select the operations that use geometry on lets say level 3 and generate the toolpath it won't attach the surface. If i have my level 3 visible when i generate the toolpath the surface shows up. This is frustrating because it creates geometry on level three as well, and i have to move all new entities to the new level. The only setback is having to move entities to new level but didn't know if anyone had seen this / figured something out with it

Of course it will let me attach geometry if i use the toolpath nesting but then i have to delete all my 5ax toolpaths I guess this is what i will do. that way only my 5ax geometry will be unfixed...

Anyone had more experience with this? At a point where I have all my parts made up individually but i can't import from file when nesting, invalid chains. I went back and deleted all geometry in my original file and can't import just the solid. My only option right now is to merge all the solids into the file, nest them and then make the geometry for my toolpaths all individually. this would suck because if i decided to change my nesting order none of the geometry would follow the solids Would be better if I could merge and then create geometry and then nest, but mcam won't let you select two different geometries for 'part' nesting (only chains, only surf, only solids)

Hi all, Finally got a solid part to work with other than a sheet metal part, been messing with the model prep tab a little. One thing I noticed is after I optimized my solid i had a swarf toolpath that got a lot worse. It said it made 30 something optimizations - is there a way to find out what these were? Is there also a way to undo the optimization?

Interesting, so it's just free to do what it wants. Well it makes sense, but for the last toolpath i posted it seems like i'm out of luck. The first cut is vertical and i can't get the unwind out of it

Actually ran into a somewhat example. Have a 5-ax multisurf op that really only needs to tilt b and not rotate during cut. I'm seeing it unwind right after it begins the cut, i think what's happening is it's plunging at c180, and then once it gets to the first cut point it rotates c270, and the next point is c360, which my machine should be able to get to, but it unwinds to c180 and stays there for the rest of the cuts. Just trying to find out what's making it rotate! Thanks OP 4 5ax multisurf G90 G00 X9.6595 Y13.6673 Z12. C0. B0. (PZN2O SB) G00 Z6. G00 X9.6593 Z2.1 C180. G01 Z2. C270. F100. G01 Y13.6624 F200. G01 Y2.2104 C358.8749 (*** Reposition ***) (*** Vertical to Angle On A, B Axis ***) (*** Retract Length : 3. ***) G01 X9.6595 Y2.2104 Z5. F2100. G00 Z12. (Move Z TC Height - P_UNWIND SB) G00 X10.1733 Y2.2031 C180. B-2.7108 G00 Z4.9878 G01 X9.6593 Y2.2104 Z2. (Back to Previous Position) F200. (Reset Feed Rate) (*** End Reposition ***) G01 X10.0314 Y2.2031 Z1.9912 G01 Y2.2053 seat cushion core aft seat bottom.mcam

Hi all, I've made a few 3ax toolpaths with the 5ax curve toolpath by just setting my axis control to top plane and having zero lead/side tilt but still leaving it as 5-ax Whenever my tool goes through this path it's staying straight up and down but the c-axis keeps rotating. I'm just wondering what geometry in mastercam is telling the tool to rotate? It's not a problem that it's rotating, I'm just wondering what's going on 'behind the scenes'

All good stuff! Haven't messed with parallel enough but now I'm motivated to. Thanks!

The line worked, and i used the margin so it didn't overlap in the middle so much. So i mean this works but it would be nice to not have to pick 'to' geometry and just have it offset the 'from' curve

Hi all, Trying to make a morph toolpath for a 5-ax surface, i have the boundary chain and drive surfaces, i've made different geometry in the center that gives me different results so i can keep playing with that, but is there a way to have it just offset the boundary toward the center? I feel like this would give me the least amount of cuts with largest stepover thanks morph.mcam

Is there a better way to do this than opening threading manager and hitting the stop button? Sometimes if I have an operation that's I made the tol too small on or something I'll try to stop it but it doesn't always stop it and I feel like sometimes takes longer than it would have to let it keep going. I can't save it while it's processing so it's kind of like crashing mcam because i have to end task from the task manager. any way to shut it down? thanks

Also I definitely see the sharp changes in these areas, but the shaking is happening all over the part, starting at the first plunge

you've helped a ton, i appreciate it all. new development: I block stopped the tool during a curve that it was bouncing through. I stepped from point to point and could still see it shake. it was not the same shake and did not happen every time. I found four lines that i stepped back and forth between that usually caused shudder but not everytime: G01 X3.1849 Y6.7586 Z1.2835 C24.5141 B-9.648 G01 X3.1636 Y6.7551 Z1.2804 C23.1278 B-10.2792 G01 X3.1415 Y6.7507 Z1.2784 C21.7406 B-11.9283 G01 X3.1219 Y6.7459 Z1.2759 C21.9351 B-12.1107 Even if these points are not tangent, I don't think I should be seeing it studder when I step through them? Or could this happen if I have too high acceleration? This really got me thinking it's a machine problem, got recommended to check for lash. Haven't done that before but I'll let you know when I get the results.

Thanks for looking at it, i've tried a few paths and like the way the pencil looked, but now I am working with the hybrid toolpath. Could you maybe screenshot an area that was particularly jagged? I'd like to know what to look for. I did try raster and still noticed some studdering, i caved today and bumped the tangency to 10 and it's smoothed out a lot of it, i bet if I went back to the raster I'd be able to get it to work but i did see the walls weren't looking great like you said. A new model 70, plenty top speed but I don't know if I'll ever get it there. it can definitely cut straight lines just fine... Mostly sculptural surfacing on low density tooling board. Using what macros? Is there anything with the machine that could cause studdering? If the tolerance of the machine is off more than it used to be, could that make it shaky, or just not as accurate?

The arc feedrate would probably help, but for a scallop toolpath I need to be able to control what it's doing through line segments since it can't have as many arcs. Right now if I make a scallop toolpath with .005 overall tol and nothing else it still shudders like it's starving for code, but with such a loose tol I wouldn't expect it to. And when I run verify it doesn't look great but when i run the toolpath it's still jittery and makes it worse than what i would see in verify scallop.mcam

Got it! Thanks for the clarification pic. JohnW your method worked too, I was rotating the segments about the endpoints, not the center point. Both of these work, thank you

Would this be a good way to test the limits of any machine?

Hmm, not sure if I am following this. By the time I make my arc I should only have two lines? the original that's been offset and the one that's been rotated, and I have the intersection, but where do I make the arc from? Edit: got it, then I would be able to create that arc and then break it into the correct length edit edit: actually still don't got it. from beginning of offset line, to intersection, to end of rotated line? thanks

Almost, I tried it and if you zoom in the lines aren't connected

It acts like it's starving, the geometry in that area just doesn't seem very "small" or like there are too many points. It's not 'technically' capable of high speed machining but they said as long as you don't have any small line segments that are consistently too small it should be able to run it. I think this acceleration is something built in to a lot of machines for HSS purposes while on my machine I have to input it manually. I don't know if the tangency is built into other machines or if it's just a "fix" for something. I assume other machines must have some sort of tangency to make them move smoothly through points instead of stepping through all of them, but at this point I would rather see it stepping through. I thought of a test to find my machine limits. If I make a line with 5 inch segments broken down into .01, .005, .001 etc I can find the point where the machine stops slowing down through the points and starts bouncing through them, I can then make a slight arc with the smallest segment I can run without bouncing, and see if it can run the arc without bouncing. I assume as I increase the angle of the segment, I will have to increase it's length to get it to run smoothly, and if I can figure this out maybe I can beat this dang tangency factor

if i made an arc i could break it into the right length but i wouldn't know where to start for the radius of the arc I made two of these lines, created an arc with the three points, extended the arc, and then broke the arc back into the line segment lengths i needed. This way i know it's very close even if i don't know it's exactly one degree between each line

Hi friends. I have a segment length and angle that I want to continue to form a longer arc. Is there a pattern or something to do this? .1" line at 1 degree Thanks

Thermwood, and I have had a crazy amount of problems with them but I don't want to say they're bad, I'm sure there are people out there that prefer them. Or maybe it's a good machine for the price but you don't get as many features as you would with a more expensive machine. So what makes it a high speed toolpath? If my machine can run scallop with a curve similar to a HSS curve, what makes those different? Unless scallop is high speed as well? What finishing toolpaths are not high speed?

Hi All, I think I've figured further into why my machine is bouncing around all my corners. My machine has a tangency factor as well as an option to change the acceleration rate. I'm thinking other machines have something similar to a tangency factor to get them to move smoothly from point to point, but they're automatic calculations instead of something you have to change manually. Same with acceleration rate, I would think most machines tell the tool to only accel so much on a short line segment where as I'm thinking my machine (if i have it set at full speed) is trying to go from 0 to 10 to 0 on every line segment. I'm not trying to say my machine is worse than others, just trying to understand what i'm working with. Ideally I would be able to make any toolpath with a tangency factor of 1 and g800 acceleration. I've been told "the only point of tangency is to fix bad geometry" so it's frustrating when I can make good geometry but the tangency messes it up. This is why the tangency messes up - the lower values are suppose to slow down at the points so you can see it stepping through them, the higher values creates tangent arcs between points, and if you have a really high value creates arcs that skips the point altogether, this can make it unpredictable and sometimes jerks around corners causing bounce. The problem I'm having is that with a tangency value of 1 it's studder stepping around a curve that doesn't have very tight tolerance. If I increase the tangency it works smoothly, but jerks around some corners. I lowered it to .1 and expected to see it stepping through points, even if it moved very slowly, but it still shuddered through them. So even with the lowest tangency I can use, the tolerance is too tight. I don't really understand why because my tolerances are not very tight. The toolpath I'm running is a highspeed pocket toolpath with a .125 corner rounding radius set in the high speed settings. I ran 12 tests, with 4 tolerances, .005, .001, .0005, .0001 and 3 tangency values, .1, 1, 10. So, with .005 overall tolerance and .1 tang factor on a 2d toolpath, i really expected to see it step from point to point, which it did around the larger curves, but still shuddered around the smallest curve, which i assume is .125. This curve is made up of 10 line segments, none shorter than .009" ~ running at 100ipm

Nah, it's got to be the tangency. Anyone want to run this on a non thermwood and see if it runs smooth?