I was also wondering if more ram would speed things up. My pc had 1Gb of ram and the mastercam benchmark test took 6min 25sec. I recently did a memory upgrade. With only mcam running, going from 1Gb to 2Gb of DDR2-800 ram gave the exact same benchmark time of 6 min 25 sec. The lesson learned: You will get a bigger bang for the buck by putting your money into a faster CPU, but I still wouldn't go with anything less than 2Gb of ram nowadays. Based on my test I think 4Gb of ram might be a little overkill for the average user. With the extra ram I did see an improvement in general speed when I was running firefox, Outlook, word, excel, ACT, and mastercam all at the same time. I didn't try running the benchmark test with all this other stuff running.

quote: So there you go. As far as I am concerned there should be a way to tell the roughing passes to machine beyond the stock so we wouldn't have to lie to the program about the width of the stock. Maybe send in a request to add this as a lathe feature addition. The quote above is exactly what I was thinking when I started this thread. I needed to see if anyone else saw it the same way before I send in the suggestion.

quote: Mastercam lathe should have a setting to force roughing paths past the boundry of a part, but it doesn't As stated earier, the simplest work around is to lie and make the stock .100 thicker, than is really is. gcode, this is the conclusion I came up with also. Just wanted to know if I was missing something. Thanks for looking/responding.

I uploaded the file to the ftp site. file name is borethru.mcx linky 1st and 2nd rough pass go to Z-1.781 3rd (last) pass goes to Z-1.881 I think mastercam only applies the extend or add line (lead out) to the very last pass. What do you think?

Not sure how to post it to FTP and it is such a simple file prolly not worth the FTP space. It is just a steel ring. Just want to rough bore it out from 5.5" up to a 6" ID. I need all the roughing passes to go .100 past the back stock boundary. Yeah I could lie about the stock boundary but wondering if this is just the way it works.

If I set it to "disable stock boundary" it only takes one roughing pass. I need at least 3 passes. Next I changed my stock to 1.75" thick and removed the left boundary. Got the same results, the first two roughing passes will only go back to the stock boundary, only the last rough pass will go the extra .100. I tried fooling with the "adjust stock", it will let me shorten the back boundary but it won't let you lengthen it beyond the stock setup values.

Problem with simple ID bore through. I have a steel burn-out ring 8"OD, 5.5" ID, 1.75" thick. Using lathe rough bore operation. Just want to bore it out to 6" ID. Stock set up is 8"OD 5.5" ID, 1.5"thick, with left margin set to .250. I want the bore bar to go an extra .100 past the back of the stock. I have "use stock as outer boundary" selected. I have tried Lead-out extend .350. I have tried add line .350 x 180 deg. I have even tried adding a line in my geometry. With all 3 methods only the last boring pass will obey the extra length, the others will not go past the back stock boundary. Any ideas how to get around this?

I've been around the cnc machine tool trade for alot of years. I think the weight/thickness of the machine tool casting has a lot to do with the accuracy a machine can hold. I think the thinner castings are more effected by thermal growth and can twist more easily Some years ago I was in the market to buy a pair of good lathes for turning large brake drums and hubs. I found a significant difference in the weight of comparable models from different manufacturers. Mazak SL-35/13,500 lbs - Mori SL-35/17,500 lbs - Okuma LB-35/21,500 lbs. There was a big difference in dollars too. The Mori was 20% more than the Mazak. The Okuma was twice as much as the Mori but the Okuma dealer wouldn't budge from list price. I bought the two Mori SL-35s. I would have bought the Okumas even if they were 10% more $ than the Mori. Oh well, their loss. Just my $.02 worth.

Hi, Welcome to the forum. Sounds like an alarm on the cnc machine not from mastercam? Apparently there isn't much Hardinge lathe experience here on the forum. The alarm suggests to me that the x-axis is locked for some reason such as the turret is not clamped or some other machine component is not in the right state to allow movement of the x-axis. But I am just speculating. If it is a machine alarm I could only suggest contacting your Hardinge service center.

I have had something similar to that happen but it wasn't intermittent. Somebody had saved the file with the EA manager activated and the dimesions kept coming up in a color different that what was in my current color box. Turned off the EA manager and then all was OK again.

I recently did a memory upgrade. With only mcam running, going from 1Gb to 2Gb of DDR2-800 ram gave the exact same benchmark time of 6 min 25 sec. The lesson learned: You will get a bigger bang for the buck by putting your money into a faster CPU.

bogusmill I agree its not that hard to build your own. You are right about doing your homework. I spent 16 weeks reading reviews and specs on newegg and tigerdirect. Would also jump to the mfg produt pages and read those too. You can learn alot from other peoples reviews. You can't be too concerned with the negative reviews unless they are all negative. You can save some $$$ by building your own, especially the high end ones. The fact is most of the 2d and ocassional 3d mastercam users don't need a $2000 computer. I was doing McamX 2d on P3-866 11 year old pc. It would do 3d but it was way too slow to really use it. It only took a week for me to finalze my choices. The other 15 weeks were spent fantisizng and doing virtual on-line builds of that $2000 computer and $500 Quaddro FX-1500 video card. Obviously those of you using 3d and multi-axis on a daily basis benefit from a higher end computer, but the one I put together will get the job done too, just a little slower. In this build I also used a good power supply Antec Earthwatts 500W w/an 80+ rating and a Gigabyte motherboard GA-P35-DS3L P35-ICH9 chipset. Over 1000 sold on newegg with a 5-egg rating. Got everything from newegg. Everything worked on the first try.

6 min. 25 sec. on a new pc, home built, Core2Duo E6750 2.66 Ghz, 2Gb DDR2-800 ram, XP-Pro 32bit, sata-II 16Mb cache hd, MSI 256Mb 128bit GeForce 8600GT video. Under $650 to build with new everything except XP-OS. It was way past time to dump my old P3-866!

SFM and IPR for milling makes perfect sense to me. Just look up cutting data for insert mills in Sandvik or Kennametal catalog. It gives you speeds in SFM and feed in IPT/REV. If feeds are in IPR instead of IPM operator can overide spindle speed without worrying about breaking a tool due to too much IPM feed rate. I think RPM and IPM are just traditional for mills over the years. I have done it both ways and I prefer SFM and IPR. I can remember SFM and IPR for various tool and material types and I don't have to get a calculator to convert to RPM and IPM.

I have 2 guys that setup/run 4 barfeed lathes. Four more guys to setup/run 6 stand alone lathes. Four more guys to setup/run 6 vertical machining centers. One lathe department surpervisor/programmer, and one mill department supervisor/programmer. No maintenance department. We run lean so there is no time for reading, pc games, chit chatting, cell phones, or any of that. There is always another machine to setup/run/clean/or repair. Thats the way the owner wants it. The pay is better than most but you must produce.

Never mind, I found it. RMB on attributes, pick surface, change surface desity in pop-up.

In V9 you could change number of UV suface lines during surface creation. Each surface could be different. Is this still available in VX2? I see it on screen,config,cad settings but I would like to change them on the fly.

Use "wear", Mcam will output G41 or G42 in the program. The operator can than set the .001 rad or dia in the machines offset table.

Yes, just end sub with M99. What is your sub going to look like? Are you going to use the sub at different face groove depths?

I have always had better results using G92 threading cycle over G76 when it comes to acme threads. This way I can control the depth of each pass accurately to the insert manufactures depth per pass charts. Always had good luck with Tool-Flo brand acme inserts.

The only thing about PDFs that is good is that it is better than a print sent over the fax machine. Now at age 50 I can't even read faxed prints with a magnifying glass. As for Cad files and paper prints.......DESIGN ENGINEERS PLEASE TAKE NOTE: (Rant) With 30 years in the machining business I tell you we NEED both. We need the cad file because it speeds up programming on the manufacturing end and is very helpul with small details, and we need prints that give us the datums and tolerances you require on your parts. It should not be our responsibility to determine your datums and tolerances for you. If you were more familiar with actually getting your hands dirty machining parts you would understand this easily. What I just said probably will xxxx you off, but the bottom line is cost. Time is money. If we have to constantly call you for the details it slows us down considerably. We have to up the price to cover this down time. Want to reduce the amount of manufacturing going to China? Give us this data up front so we can do our jobs efficiently "right from the get go". Also don't put tolerances less than .0005" if the part function doesn't absolutley require it. These just add higher cost overall. (There I feel better now).

quote: I was thinking of using a milling cutter and the c axis to interpolate it. I have done this too. It was kind of like a stop collar with a set screw thru the OD and and eccentric cam shape on one face. Used an endmill mounted paralles to Z-axis to mill the cam. Worked very well.

We make a part approx 2" OD X 2" long. It has a bore thru the face but eccentric to to the OD by .25 offset. We made a split bushing and wire EDM the hole in the bushing off center. We slip the bushing over the part then chuck on the bushind OD in a standard 3 jaw chuck. Works fine. Of course this is a very simple type eccentric part.

Thanks for the reply Jay, I can understand the situation now.

VERY Abrasive stuff. Had to do a shallow flat bottom counterbore with an endmill on a lathe. Went through about 6 endmills for 20 parts.