Take a look at Leadwell. My old shop had a couple of them and they did a really good job. They were significantly cheaper than the Haas also. I can't remember the exact price but when the Haas saleman came in and saw a new leadwell he asked the boss "how much did you pay for that thing?". When my boss told him he said "well I guess they're just giving those things away". It had Fanuc drives and controller, a 10K spindle (I think this was an option), rigid tapping, programable coolant nozzle and was pretty fast. I think the price was around 50K for the one we had w/ a 30in table.

Thanks again guys!

Thanks Code

I was wondering if any of you guys have much experience w/ Monel? I have to machine a few castings w/ some pretty crazy stuff (geometry) going on & I was just looking for a decent (conservative) starting point. Officially the alloy is QQ-N-288 w/ 65kpsi min tensile strength. Does anyone have a suggestion? The castings cost $8200 each, so I'm pretty scared about breaking a tool & scapping a part.

Thanks jmparis, After closer inspection of the tool path, it turned out that the endmill was actually trying to cut the whole outside shape and that's why the path was taking so long. After a quick call to my reseller for help, (I needed to specify the previous tool dia, not tool path) the path just cuts the corners as it's supposed to and the path is about 4min, so no worrys. Thanks again.

Quick chip load question: Cutting 5052 alum .063 thick. How much chip load can I get away with on a 1/16 endmill? I'm doing a re-machine on some pockets (after using a 1/8 endmill) and mcam says it's a 38 minute tool path. I'm hoping that I can cut that down some by actually using a resonable chip load. Thanks in advance

Thanks beagle, Learn something new every day

control

Thanks alot guys. I should have checked metric sizes.

Do any of you have a good source for non-standard ball mills? I am looking for a .177 dia ball mill, but I could probably get away w/ a 11/64. I haven't seen any in our cataloges. It would be nice if I could stay away from having one custom ground. Thanks, Charlie

Thanks for the input guys. I actually talked to my reseller and he pointed me in the right direction. Cut the size of the code to less than half of what it was. After 8 months, I think I'm finally getting the hang of this stuff. Thanks again

Hey guys/gals, I'm programming my first job using surface tool paths. Everything looks great but this thing has spit out MILES of code. I was wondering if there was something similar to "filtering" on contour paths that I could change to reduce the size of this code a little.

Hoping that one of you might have the solution to my open pocket problem. I'm using open pocket to rough all three sides of a triangular part (using transformed tool path. All was going well until I decided to change my geometry a little bit. After the geometry change (and rechaining the pocket) Mcam has decided to cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside. I've tried reversing the chain, tried both climb and convensional milling, but no matter what I do it still wants to cut on the wrong side of the line. As soon as I changed the Geometry back it worked fine again. Any suggestions? I'm really struggling here.

Worked my way through school (mech eng) as an operator. Now I work as a manufacturing eng for a defense contractor. It was pretty funny, as graduation was coming up and I was doing the mass job interview thing (applying for mech eng jobs), I was told on more than one occasion that I was TOO HANDS ON. I'm still not sure what that means but it ended up w/ me in this job which is ok. Now, I do a little of everything, programming, writing "op sheets" (assembly instuctions), make/buy decisions, etc. As far as pay for engineers goes, I think that most of the folks I graduated with started out in the 40-50K range depending on where they went.

On our Fadals (and Haas for that matter) I have to select "perpendicular" for the line movement in order to get it to turn cutter comp on during the line move and not on the G3 (ramp on) move. This was advice given to me by my reseller. Hope it helps