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I bought SolidCAM two years ago or so, if I had it to do over I wouldn't do it again.

I've made a lot of good parts with it, and honestly I really want to love it, but for the money there are way...

I assume you're talking about round-over cutters?

Define it as a standard end mill, then select the "shaped tools" option (on 2009 it is one of the tabs in the tool setup). You specify the...

I've tried that a few times, only in simulations. I think it's kind of bogus, the paths it generates don't make sense. For example, a straight cut on an open side of an open pocket and it spirals...

After sleeping on it, I think this is what I'll have to do -- make sure that I shut the mill down with the startup tool mounted. Making a part will never be changing tools where there is likely to...

Right side of the table, facing left. I have a chick subplate and a mount block to adapt the table so I lose about 2" in Z. Long tools become very unhappy...

Joe

I just mounted my rotary table (hrt210) on my VF2. Man, that thing is huge!

So, the standard machine home will crash tools in the changer with the table when I start the machine up (power up).
...

I'm adding an RT-210B rotary table to my VF2.

I have a real noob question, what is the best way to:

1. check the alignment to the x-axis (I imagine putting a 12" length of precision round stock...

Thanks, but that doesn't have the dimensions I want -- the 4 hold down holes and the slot -- I marked them in the photo in red.

I think I'll have enough room, good point though...I'll re-check. I hate the thought of pulling the plate out.

Thanks, but that is just the physiical dimensions of the unit, what I'm looking for is that layout of the bottom, in particular the four holes in the corners and the obround keyway in the center. ...

I have a VF2 and just got an HRT210B rotary table for it. My machine has the Chick subplate, so the hold down slots in the base of the HRT210 won't work with the subplate (they don't line up).

I...

Thanks Bob.

I've had a couple of discussions with the Solidcam folks, there are 3 modules:

1. Indexial: This allows you to define coordinate systems/positions and then index to that position,...

Ramping, 7 degrees, .050 doc, 30 ipm = 110 seconds

Plunging, .1 doc (pecking), 30 ipm = 53 seconds

Like I said, both are way better than 15 minutes (plus ~ 3 minutes to clean it up and get into...

Oh, totally. I ran the initial parts this way to verify the design with the cutters I had on hand, now I'm looking for the fastest way to get the job done so I can blast out a bunch of these.
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I have a small part I'm making, it's about .75" x 2" outside, 1018 steel.

I'm currently using a pocketing operation on the inside area -- the part in blue in the screenshot. With a .1875" 4 flute...

Anyone have any experience with adding a 4th axis to SolidCAM?

In talking with the rep there are three packages, but I haven't gotten any documentation on how these work within SolidCAM (new...

Is anyone else on SolidCAM maintenance? They put out several service packs each year, which is in part why I paid for their maintenance plan.

BUT, none of the service packs have any information...

STL isn't a graphics format, it's a surface made up of triangles.

The newest version of SolidCAM (R12 SP3.2) claims to have a new STL Milling capability to use that format directly.

Joe

Just to close the loop on this, the solution I got back from SC was to change my mac file setting for ARC_QUADRANTS to Y. Setting it to N attempted swing the circle (360 degrees) in two arcs. When...

I mentioned that I'd seen a similar bug where the arc centers are incorrectly calculated. I reproduced the bug and sent it to SolidCAM back in July and was told it was fixed. I just checked and it...

Yes, I reported this to SolidCAM (I bought directly from them) and I'm working with tech support.

I have to agree on the bugs, although I saw a ton of problems in R11.2 and was told that they...

Bob, why not HSM for roughing? I tend to use it a lot for roughing, and use non-HSM for finishing in some specific cases. For 2D shapes and pockets HSM is a bad choice for finishing because the...

I'm using SolidCAM 2008 SP2.4 (the latest as of last week). I have a simple part that I need to thread mill, when I ran the generated program I got partial threads only on one side of the shoulder....

I tried the translate on a part today, it totally didn't work.

What I wanted to do was cut two identical parts out a a piece of stock. I had the translate set up with one row, two copies and an...

Dave Johnson is a good guy, he really goes out of his way to be helpful.

I don't see SP1.1 in the download area, just R12SP1... Weird. They have some kind of problem with releases, there has been no announcement to customers (I'm even on current maintenance) about even...

Thanks for all the input.

My machine is a new VF2 w a 10K rpm spindle.

I've got the cycle time down to 26 minutes (from just over an hour). The changes I made were:

1. Two step roughing on...

A copy mill makes perfect sense, especially for roughing this part out. I wonder if I could rough and finish with the same tool?

Hi,

I'm making this part out of steel (standard A36 hot rolled with the mill scale cleaned off), using carbide cutters.

In this picture you can see the finishing operation, done with a 4 flute...

I just noticed that they released R12 today.

I've been using a pre-release version for a few weeks, I'm eager to see how the final release landed in terms of quality.