Hi All,

I made an oopsie and lost some of my settings on X5, but basically before this mistake I was able to rotate a toolpath and when I had the "Force Tool Change" box checked, it would only force the tool change at the first operation, not the subsequent rotate operations. 

For example, I'm milling 2 different sized pockets, and then rotating that toolpath around the center about 5 times. Instead of manually selecting the other 10 sets of lines and surfaces, I just use the rotate function except now for some reason, it's forcing a tool change at the other 5 operations in the rotate toolpath, whereas it wouldn't do that before. This adds unnecessary stops. I'd like to keep the force tool change checked at the beginning of the operation, as it allows the operator a chance to check everything out before moving on with the program. 

I can't seem to find where I messed up to change this. Would this be something in the post processor or the Mastercam settings?

On 6/26/2020 at 5:51 AM, DUM1 said:

I really do love this forum it really is a great tool in the mastercam programming tool box.I have come here many times and been helped by some real genius programmers .

I've had 15 bosses in the last ten years that I've been working here and not one has any programming background or experience . This forum is the only help I have when i need it.

Thanks everyone !

 

Same here, the previous programmer here just left and didn't offer any help, I had the company sign me up for the NTMA course a little while back and this forum has been very helpful. Thank you for the suggestion once again!

9 hours ago, DUM1 said:

or maybe create a surface or solid and use it as a "floor" to stay away from

This worked! It's fun experimenting with different stuff.

I created a revolved surface and selected that as the avoidance geometry. Thank you for the suggestion, and thank you to everyone who gave a suggestion as well.

1 hour ago, DUM1 said:

or maybe create a surface or solid and use it as a "floor" to stay away from

Hmm I hadn't thought of that, that actually might work. I will try that later today and see if it works, I might have to offset it lower than the profile just to be sure it cuts the entire window. I'll report back later tonight on how that turns out. 

7 hours ago, So not a Guru said:

Set the "Steep/Shallow" depths to what you want.

I did but it didn't change the way it follows the material on the bottom of the part. I can set the the Max depth to what I need but it still has a lot of air time under the spoke. 

4 hours ago, crazy^millman said:

That is the mushroom effect. The stock models only act as a 2D snap shot looking through the plane to know what to machine. The toolpaths do not have the intelligence built into them to know from a previous stock model once it gets past a certain point there is no material to cut. I call this the mushroom effect. Model a mush room shape and make a stock model. Then machine the floor around the stem off a much room. It will keep cutting the whole shape of the last widest section of the mushroom from the bottom of the mushroom shape to the fl0or. It will not know there no material. In situations like this you either deal with it and in your case unless that part is 200" long I would.  The next option is you make on operation to a the break out point and then make a new stock model using the previous operation as a source operation and then work forward from that point making stock models to be the intelligence needed for OPTI-Rest toolpaths. I have a part right now with 16 operation and 16 files where I have as many 50 stock models for an operation and much of them are for this reason and the fact Stock model and OPTI-Rest are bad with large ID shapes.

That's what I was thinking, I might have to do multiple operations and create a new stock model each time to create the cuts I'm looking for, or just deal with the extra run time in the short term.

Hey Guys,

I've recently been learning on a newer version of Mastercam after taking an NTMA course and it seems a lot easier than X5. The basic class was a lot of drawing but I wish there was more on the toolpaths side of things. 

I've been spending some hours researching this forum to see how I can make this as efficient as possible. The best way seems to be by using stock model and then selecting that in the rest material options. However I'm still losing some time once it cuts past the spoke of the wheel. How do I keep the tool engaged only where the material is on the bottom inner side of the part? The pictures are attached. The top seems fine as the program is stepping over and moving down.

Thank you I appreciate your help. 

On 10/10/2019 at 3:22 AM, pullo said:

X5 was the last Mcam to have the whole manual in one book/file. So if you look inside the mcam 5 directory for .pdf files , you should find a 20 meg behemoth . That will be the user manual.... 

I think it's under \documentation...

 

Gracjan

 

I will check it out thank you very much!

1 hour ago, gcode said:

This website still has X5 material available in PDF format

https://www.emastercam.com/store/category/63-mastercam-x5/

 

1 hour ago, Aaron Eberhard - CNC Software said:

Good luck, this will be the equivalent of getting help on Windows XP problems now..

Wow, thank you for the quick response guys! I appreciate it and I will checkout the PDF's. 

Hi All,

As the title suggests I'm an X5 user who is also new here and also new to the world of CNC machining. 

I'm just wondering what would be the best course of action for me to take regarding learning how to use Mastercam professionally. I work for a wheel company, and I've been learning how to use Mastercam (We only have X5). I can so far toolpath a part provided that the drawing has 3D milling lines for me to follow for contours. I can't seem to figure out how to program a 3D solid. When I'm trying to program a solid, I have trouble selecting the surfaces, because it selects the entire part. I took a Mastercam basic course with the NTMA training center, but most of that was lathe and 2D milling, I've had a hard time trying to apply those basics to programming a solid forged wheel with different angles and surfaces. 

I appreciate any tips and feedback!