That's some serious BITD. Dave T. and Chris Bullines were ruling the roost then. Those were the days @Rekd™. Those were the days.

On the filter tab you have arc/line tolerance options... Depending on the geometry of the feature(s) you could do a 2D/3D Swept path plus you still get filtering options as well.

Holy Lazarus! This has GOT to be the oldest thread resurrected.

#RAYCIS!

There is DEFINITELY something to be said for not being a shareholder owned company. I STILL believe the person(s) that came up with software by subscription needs to be dragged into the public square and flogged. Repeatedly. That is SUCH a horrible way to treat customers IMHO. I understand the "revenue stream" aspects, but that's what maintenance is for. Just make the updates so compelling that it becomes a no-brainer to stay on maintenance. My wife has the last version of Adobe PhotoShop that you can actually own. That CD , and license key number stays in my safe. No joke. My wife has a subscription to the latest PhotoShop and LightRoom... that's like $120/yr or something liek that. She gets an educator's discount so it's not horrible. Sure would have been nice to own them. We'd be ahead of the game by now.

Are you in the US?

Thanks Orvie. I just added it to my library. Sweet!

NOT an MSC fan. They are my LAST resort when I need something. Royal... we have an EXCELLENT sales rep in my area for them. A guy that used to work for ATS Workholding BITD, then went out on his own. His technical expertise is excellent. Back to the topic at hand. Support will almost always win the day for me. Royal Quick Change collets are very good. Not quite as good as Hainbuch but probably double digit % less. 75% of the time when I am making a reccommendation it is one of these two systems. Which one I pick depends entirely on the kind of stuff the customer is/plans on doing. Straight bar work with the normal shapes (round, hex and square) then I go with Royal first. If they need to switch between ID and OD work and a few other scenarios, then I go with Hainbuch. The other 15+% goes to Schunk the last 10% goes between ATS, SMW, and a few others. With me, it's always what fits the application the best. JM2CFWIW

Our Matsuura 5-Axis machines are set this way as well.

I will usually have 1 machine group for each physical machine the part will go into. Generally two. Sometimes a VMC prep op. From there I'll have a Toolpath Group for each operation. Since the majority of time I am working on a 5-Axis machine, there's maybe 3 ops. Usually only two. Then like roughing group(s), Semi-Finishing Group(s), FInishing Group(s), Hole-Prep group, semi-finish Holes, finish holes. Deburring, etc... It's not uncommon for me to have dozens of groups with of hundreds of operations. Groups and sub-groups is what keeps things organized. ...a file with a hundred ops and NO groups. Going through that is... ROUGH. Even worse is all those ops and no operation comments. I label EVERY operation without exception. There's just no good reason not to IMHO.

You can set up a "depth" limit by using floor surfaces or if you're driving the tool off chains, you can use a +/- from the chain depth. This is on the tool control tab I believe.

Roughly 6025mm x 3112mm footprint. Options, we only sell them one way; loaded. • 4MB CNC Memory (you run all the CNC Programs off the Dataserver anyway) • 1GB Dataserver • 1k Block Look-Ahead if doing mold/impeller type work. 600 Block Look-Ahead otherwise. • Tool Center Point Control • Tilted Work Plane • Work Setting Error Correction • Renishaw Laser or Touch Type in-machine Tool Measurement System • Renishaw OMP-400 w/ Inspection Plus amd GoProbe Software • 1k Through Spindle Coolant w/ Mist Collection • 320 Tools Minimum That ought to get you going in the right direction.

SSD has a great effect on speed. NVMe drives have a tremendous effect. On my rig I don't use a PageFile. I've got 64GB of RAM. When I've got multi-thread toolpaths regenning, I set them to High Processing in the Multi-Threading manager... If you want, I can run a regen on your file to compare speed.

The thing about printed specs are they are absolute BEST conditions imaginable. Climate controlled environment, temperature controlled coolant, mist collection, etc..... to get to low single digit microns and beyond. Expansion coefficient and physics are a real b!+(# . No joke.

Talked to a friend that has a number of Vickers A2100 and Siemens 840D controls in his shop the other day. He began converting all those old platter HDD's to SSD's in the PC based controls during the slowdown earlier this year and he said machine performance went up as did reliability. He said it took him a few tries to work out the process. Basically he cloned the drives on a Linnux machine then added the IDE to SATA converter and plugged the SSD's in and away he went. He said 2.5" Indstrial SATA SSD's worked the best out of the 3 or 4 (Samsung, Intel, Crucial, and another that escapes me at the moment) he tried on the oldest machine (late 90's).

Now you're catching on.

I believe that's Productivity's Territory... cool. I like those guys.

If I may ask, what state are you in?

A "new" MAM72-42V would be a factory order. They are no longer stocked machines in the US. That's probably why it's taking a little time to get the quote. People seemed to prefer the MAM72-63V over the MAM72-42V. We only have 1 or 2 in our territory (Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Utah) that I am aware of. I have no idea cost though. I only help people learn how to use 'em. I don't actually quote or sell them.

Thanks for the honesty and insight @MIL-TFP-41. It was good seeing you a few weeks ago.

@jas6142, we've got a customer @MIL-TFP-41 that buys used ones. They've even bought a few that were abused and managed to bring them back. Like @crazy^millman said, try to get a service record and find out what option package it has so you can make an educated decision.

Maybe related, maybe not; when I draw something in my CAD (doesn't even matter what CAD and/or CAM package), I always, without exception draw EVERYTHING sharp. Once done, then I add draft faces, after that, fillets and chamfers. And ALWAYS without exception going from largest feature to smallest feature. Doing things with that method gets me exactly what I want about 95% of the time. Every once in a while I'll need to do an extrude cut to get something just right, or I may need to reorder the solid operations. JM2CFWIW YMMV

There's NOTHING wrong with brute force when you need to solve a problem. Solutions to problems aren't always elegant. US Navy SEALs have a saying; the only easy day was yesterday. Adapted to our industry in the same vein, it could be said, the only easy project was the last one.

Yeah @JB7280, there are some bitter people in this trade. It's truly unfortunate because we're in DIRE need of more people that can get excited about making stuff. There's a LOT of really awesome people in this forum truly. Some of my best friends I've met in here.

I think graphical toolpath editing would be a better next step.