have a funny issue MC is not allowing me to use rapid retract with any drill cycle. It's stuck on the tools listed retract rate. I did set the tool manager to use material to calculate, made no difference. Any ideas?

Many thanks Thad, that was the problem. Dave

I just installed MC3 SP1 on a new box and get a funny issue new entities will only show up on level one no matter what the level is set to I did not save my old config file as the old box crashed and would not restart I figure something is defaulted somewhere any ideas? Dave

Amazing Thanks a lot John. Dave

OK the change to the post worked but the control still chokes here on the Qs G76 P012429 Q.005 R.001 I need that Q value to be a radial value with no decimal. Example I see in the book is "Q003" I changed it by hand and got it to run. Is there a post change for that? Dave [ 01-24-2009, 09:30 PM: Message edited by: DaveR ]

Thanks a lot John! *edit* worked! Dave

Appreciate the help, please forgive me but what does "comment out" mean? Dave

Using a fanuc OT-c, generic Fan 2x post For the G76 cycle I need X,Z,R,P,Q,F output Instead of F I get the feed rate post output preceded by an E Like so: G97 S499 M03 G0 X1.17 Z.3588 G76 P012429 Q0. R.001 G76 X1.421 Z-.45 P255 Q87 R0. E.04167 M9 Machine errors out I am assuming this is the problem I may be wrong, I am totally new to lathe programming. Thanks for any advice. Dave

Only weirdos and democrats use radius programming. Dave

Change the parameter in the lathe control to diameter.

How do I get to the mill inch default file? Dave

OK, I set everything to incremental, also tried just the depth incremental and still it will not let me select "by depth". What else can I try? Dave

Thanks a lot for the help, appreciate it. Dave

Using X3. 1. When I select a series of pockets and "by depth" as soon as I close the depth selection window it reverts back to by pocket, won't let me select by depth for some reason, I really need this. 2. I get an error at startup, suppose this may be the cause but I do not know, how would I fix this do you know? Looks like this... error (L485,cmcamx3configmastercam.mtb): specified command not found A list of five of those L772 L786 L809 L810 listed. Anyone know what that means? Dave

It appears to still be an issue in X3. Had the same problem yesterday, was scratching my head all eve (boy do I have a sore head) over this. Dave

Hey PIP, would love to see some pictures and....have a crack at that file too Dave

Changes in the tool plane are what drives the fourth axis. Change the tool plane to the face you want and re tool path it.

I've also had that happen, get the creation of a thousand red points during an engrave path generation. I have gotten around it by deleting the tool path, re loading the whole part and picking on the largest chunk of geometry I can find. I may be wrong but it seems to happen more often if I pick geometry that is some little line or arc segment. Dave

Did you select all ops> edit common parameters > change NC file name, make the file name the same for all? That one gets me a lot of times. Dave

quote: and buying a '20HP' spindle without a gearbox will not be a happy experience if you are doing any heavy stock removal because I can stall the belt drive machine roughing aluminum without pushing all that hard. Not been my experience at all, I can run 200 ipm with a 3/4 EM all day on my belt drive VF-2. It's never stalled or even slowed in aluminum. Only time I stalled was taking .100 in inconel 625 with a 3" face mill. Used a 2" face mill and it worked fine, 70-80% spindle load. You don't have to have a gear box and belt machines are not gutless. I cut 6-4 titanium almost every day on my Haas. Dave

500-the moon SFM depending on how much RPM you have, .004 feed to start. I'd take .1 DOC personally with a finish pass. Like you wrote there are lots of different ways to do it. Aluminum 6061 is probably as easy as it gets, very forgiving if you are not just so on the feeds and speeds.

May not be a bad idea, but who is to say the next one will be any better? But...for anyone who has Vista they should note a distinct improvement with this latest update. Mine runs just like it does on XP now. I have a dual boot system, I set up just because of these issues, don't need it anymore. Dave

Downloaded the new update...what was it sp1 for X2mr2 right? I've been running Vista Ultimate for the past few months (I know boooo) and been having all kinds of graphics issues, and extremely slow tool pathing. It all appears to be fixed now. Dave

Ah, bet that's what it is, I rarely bother setting that stuff up (stock size etc) because most of what I'm doing is pretty simple. Bet that's it. Thanks. Dave

I set all my feeds and speeds where I want them, go and post and some defaulted back to what MC gave me. No idea why. One was a drill cycle and another a chamfer pass. Any way to fix this? Some setting somewhere? Seems to be happening just about every time I post a program. Dave