[Rik H]

I have a demo ver of solidcam. I am looking around to see what suits me best.
The milling side of things looks nice and easy the turning side is not so or that is my finding.
I have watched all the solid cam vids on there site but when it comes to the turning when the video starts all the geometrys and operations are allready done and it it not that clear to see what in in the operations lists etc.

Has anyone got a better video or a manual for this cause I would like to give it a fair chance but I have never used this before and was used to alphaCAM.
Any help would be great thanks

[mattpatt]

Rik, this is something that I can't help you with at all, but I am interested to learn.

We are getting more and more requests to do turning jobs and the last request is worth several tens of thousands of pounds so we're considering buying a CNC lathe. I'd like to use solicam for the job so I'll need a crash course!

[Rik H]

Well I have one of the reps getting back to me at the begining of this week fingers crossed.
I so far have found solidcam to be a nice program to use but I feel that the turning side of it lets it down quiet a lot.
I hope my doubts can be put to rest and will share anything I get with you as regard training etc and hope we can in turn help each other out in the future

[Brakeman Bob]

We use the Turning and Mill/Turn options here and the turning is easy enough to learn but the logic of the SolidCAM pages is very different to the Milling. The definition of tools in the turning side is truly awful but I am told that SC2011 has a lot of 'improvements' in this area so when I get the courage to install SC2011 (certainly no until SP1) I shall report back.

In the turning you can do things without a solid model but if you have a model and then model your stock, you can set up SolidVerify and it works nicely. Very useful for the Mill/Turn stuff. On plain turning, it is best to define your geometries in sketches as this gives you the means to make adjustments easily.

All in all, we picked up turning after about half a day of training and within a week we were turning like we'd been at it for years.

Think hard about if you want to use Canned cycles in your turning programs and if so, how you want to deploy them, either as sub-programs or loops between block numbers as this has big implications for your post processor.

Have fun.

Bob

[mattpatt]

All sounds a bit of a struggle!

I'm forever fiddling with the gpp file for milling, and I just don't know if there's enough spare hours to be fiddling with the turning too.

[Rik H]

Well I have to be fair the rep did get back to me yesterday as they said he would and today I recived a turning traing course CD with everything I asked for.

The CD is great it covers all the stuff I wanted like how to set up the geomertrys for turning etc.

So looks like I wil have some nice reading material for a few days and then see how I get on.
Will keep you all posted.

[leepez]

We've just recently purchased SC and I had started the training course this week. Just completed the Milling today and the Turning training is tomorrow, it will be interesting to see how it compares to Edgecam turning.

I must say the SC Milling was much more user friendly.

[leepez]

Turning was easy to use, quite long winded perhaps because I had been used to EC Feature Finder. Drilling a hole through the centre required me to draw a sketch line which would then be used for the toolpath.
Did find the screwcutting cycle very easy to use and can cover all types of thread forms.

[Rik H]

Well so far so good the material answered all the questions I had and brought me round to the way SolidCam thinks.
Once I had this the rest was quiet easy and a pleasure to use. All I have to do now is sell it to a chap that wants to invest in my business and then I am away fingers crossed.

[tmbg]

Would you be willing to share some tips on getting started? I'm struggling with it same as you were. I just got my lathe running last night, and I wanted to try to come up with some simple test files to run beyond the quick one-diameter turning that I hand wrote.

I messed with solidcam for a good solid while last night, and I finally got it to generate toolpaths the way I expected, but when I tried to export g-code, it crapped out with an error. I'll mess with it some more this evening to see if I can make it behave.

[Rik H]

I will help in anyway I can bare in mind I'm as new to this as you are lol.
you can pm me and will exchange emails then see what we can come up with:idea: