I teach technology at a high school in Waterloo Ontario. We have used Mastercam for the past 10 years in our gr 9-12 Design Tech, Construction Tech, and Transportation Tech programs. We use a gantry mill to do the machining. We have used Mastercam and our CNC machine to produced all sorts of articles from school rings to robotics parts.

Great idea! We could use something like that at our school. Would it be possible for you to post a digital picture of the setup?

Some projects for high school are shown on the following web page. Hope this helps. Instructors Page

Most of my high school students like to design and machine things they can use personally, like license plate frames, clock faces, plastic gears for projects and face plates for their car stereos.

A group of our high school students will be entering the Skills Canada CNC machining contest this year. Can anyone forward specs. for parts from other or previous contests which they can use to practise?

I am looking slabs of blue machining wax exactly one inch thick. The kind that is used for lost wax casting. Anyone know a source that can supply it? Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

Very much appreciated, this will save my students a lot of time.

We are using Mastercam 8.1 v3 and AH-HA interface software, it works fine.

Thanks for all the excellent advice. Should save us a lot of time when this problem comes around again.

Occasionally my high school student's get the "Boundary Not Closed" message when attempting a pocket operation. It usually takes a while to find either the duplicate entity or unjoined corner and fix it. Can anyone suggest a quick / efficient procedure for correcting the problems which could cause this message.

Dan, I will send you an e-mail with the picture attached just in case you are still not able to get to the picture.

I will look into the engraving tool, thanks for the input.

I am about to purchase some .01" and .005" diamter flat end mills to machine small lettering in blue carving wax. Is there an advantage to using either a 2 flute or 4 flute cutter?

Thanks for the ideas. I changed the font slightly to create larger islands, reduced the spindle speed, set all cut directions for climb milling and used compressed air. I am not sure which change solved the problem but the lettering cut fine.

I am working on a project that involves pocketing lettering using blue machinable wax. I am using a .01" flat end mill to pocket letters which are .08" to .10" in height. Depth is set to .018 I am having trouble with some of the inner portions of the letters breaking off. Any ideas on how to prevent this, either during the design or machining process.