Interesting. All those thread mills have multiple flutes, bunch of threading points, and only one thread pitch to them. Watching our senior machinist do some work earlier this semester, he used a much different thread mill. Has two cutting points offset 180 degrees (I imagine so its balanced when its spinning at thousands of RPM). Just big enough to do 12 threads per inch, but since its only two cutting points you can use it for a variety of stuff, for example I think we've done between 32 and 12 thread per inch screws. All the hardware we make uses class 2 threads, and they work fine. Seems like that kind of tool would be more logical as you can use it for a wide range of diameters and screw pitches.

Given that they're switching to an entirely new kernel from the looks of things, I'm glad they're spending the extra time in beta to iron out as much stuff as possible before they hit a release candidate and the go live.

The senior machinist where I work just pulls numbers outta the air. And it works great. Then again he's be doin it for 40 years. I use 3.82 and then round it down a bit to stay on the safe side. Carrying it to more decimal places isn't really going to make much difference.

Don't think I'd trust that much. The again if you needed something simple and didn't need to be super high quality, and knew of no machinists anywhere it might not be so bad. Don't think thats an issue for anyone here!

For future reference you can also have IGES models that give you the trimmed surfaces AND line geometry. Its what I like to use for milling complex crap. That or ACIS.

"I've been playing the drum solo from Hot for Teacher on my two enter keys and that won't stop it." Hmm. Try the intro to When the Levee Breaks instead. That may be your problem.

The shop I work in we have a Fadal 3016VMC. Our post is set up so that the 1st Misc integer is the fixture offset. Therefore, you just draw your geometry, write your toolpaths, and when you do you tell it which fixture to operate on.

Ahh right. Gotcha.

I'm hearing talk of buying MasterCAM liscences at home. How much does a seat of say, Mill Level 3 cost? Bet it aint cheap.

That exterminator one is priceless.

How about saving the file from Iv9 as some sort of dump solid rather than an *.ipt, and then bringing it into MasterCAM, as an interim solution. Our design team (sadly) switched from Inventor to SolidWorks earlier this year, so I don't have a good answer for you.

Well. Was more input than I thought I'd get! Thanks, all. Yea, Buffs...well what can you expect against Oklahoma. If our offensive line had did some better blocking and gave Klatt some more time, we coulda had a lot more points on the board. Still got the bowl ahead, and next year Oklahoma is losing like 16 starters. Klatt and our receivers and secondary will all have a lot more experience, and I think we'll do way better.

Again, excuse my inexperience here. Only been doing this a couple weeks. Probably a dumb question. http://www.formtecag.ch/mastercam/grafik/f...wege/pic006.jpg Is that what the majority of you are used to seeing and working with in MasterCAM? A nice, easy to see, 3d model? The shop I'm working in right now, its run by a machinist of 40+ years experience. He's a bit..set in his ways. Either imports a flat DXF and works from there, or manually puts in all the geometry. But its always just simple colored lines and arcs floating around in space. At first, I thought it was pretty crude, but I've gotten used to working like that. Still a bit confusing at times. Once in a blue moon he'll put in a simple drive or check surface. So is this something new? Solids, or surfaces? I've seen the option to import dump solids from SolidWorks or Inventor, but I've never dinked around with it. Is that what I'm seeing in that screenshot? What do you folks here typically work with? Simple line geometry made manually or from a DXF, or do you just import or create an actual solid and work from there?

I see..thanks a lot guys.

So can ya explain to me why you'd want to use one over the other? I got no beef with the system in general. I like it. But I'm wondering the pros/cons of each method (backpolot, verify w/ TS, verify w/o TS)

I did see it. Seemed like a whole lot of crap flinging with a low signal to noise ratio.

Hey, I could be wrong on all this. The guy I'm more or less apprenticing with, has got all the experience in the world but is kinda stuck in his ways of doing things. So I could be totally off base and missing the whole idea, which is why I posted in the first place...

Yea, I'm a bit new to MasterCam still. First question I have is what exactly does TrueSolid mode do for you? Seems like it lets you pan around, rotate, save your result as an STL, that sorta deal. So why wouldn't you run TS on? Whats its drawback? And then backplotting...the grey "cut" it leaves seems kinda crappy unless you're doing something purely 2D. And even then, if you're running anything other than a flat EM or a drill (like, a chamfer mill) doesn't seem that useful because it won't give you a good idea of your real cut. The nice thing is you can step it, which as far as I know you can't do in verify. Stepping in verify...sounds like it would be a cool feature for X.

Wow. I don't see why they're doing that. I could see a small company being bought out by MS, needing more funding, what have you. But I don't see Dassault in any trouble. They have a ton of seats sold, good quality products. Then again, you never know. I doubt MS's dev team, which knows nothing about parametric modelling, is going to barge in and change everything. If they do, looks like I'll just go back to Inventor 9

Hey folks. So I've been looking around here, and there's assorted info on X coming through the grapevine, but has CNC actually come up with a documented improvements list yet? Or even a user-compiled FAQ on X gathered from all the stuff here? Thanks, -Tom Szelag

Don't have mastercam handy right now, but I assume you have a concave down fillet of constant radius? If its around an edge, how bout just making/using a formed cutter and zipping around it? Would save a lot of time and get a great finish.

Personally I design everything in SolidWorks or Inventor, then bring it over to MasterCAM to do toolpaths. Then again since I'm working on a degree in mechanical engineering I learned parametric feature-based modelling in those software suites before ever getting the chance to machine and use MasterCAM. The senior machinist I work with though designs absolutely everything in MasterCAM. To each their own, its a preference thing I suppose.

sfm * theMeaningofLife / cutter dia (in)

Don't know about a free demo available online. Might want to check out a local reseller, talk to them, see if you can grab a demo copy. SolidWorks does interface real well with MasterCam. Can import the solid itself or prints without much hassle. I think there's even a plugin for SolidWorks called MasterCam Direct or something like that, which allows you to be working on a part in SW and straight from there boot MasterCam and start writing toolpaths!