[Brakeman Bob]

I am a long time user of SolidCAM and until recently I only ever cut Aluminium 7075 or 2616 (except for rare occaisions when we had to machine MMC, about which the less said the better) and as such I only had one tool library with the the cutting data for Ally as the default.

Times change, and now I find myself programming to cut Steel, Stainless, Titanium and even some Cast Iron in the offing, so I need to run some tools with different data depending on the material (mainly drills). The simple way around this would be to create different tool libraries for each material and this I have started to do.

But in SolidCAM 2011 there is this option under the Tool Libraries menu called "Cutting Conditions" which, if I understand the help screens right, could be the answer. I would like to talk to someone about getting the best out of this facility but my SolidCAM guy doesn't know of anyone here in the UK using it. SolidCAM Professor has not got around to doing a tutorial on Cutting Conditions yet (in the "What's New for 2011" presentation the link to SolidCAM Professor for Cutting Conditions just says "Coming Soon!"). So, does anyone on this forum have any experience, good or bad, with using "Cutting Conditions" in SolidCAM 2011 that they would like to share?

Keep the swarf flying!

[glovebox20]

Hello

I've used "Cutting Conditions" in Inventorcam2011, and it did work ok, not great though. In Inventorcam2012, they when backwards.

In Inventorcam2012, they removed the Material type button from the part setup so now you have to go to each tool indivualy and manualy update the material type.

When you are cutting alum, tool geometerys are different than when you're cutting Stainless, Alloy Steel, ect. For this reason alone, I think it is best to have seprate tool libraries for each material, and seperate 'Templates/Machine Process tables' as well.

Every wonder why they don't do a great job documenting this fuction? My theroy is that it dosen't work that well, it's complicated, and or it's clusmy. I just wished they would do a better job showing the best way to add fixtures/custom stock into the CAM file and other Cad functions as well. I've tried exploreing the Machine Process and I havent got to far with it. I dose seem to offer a lot of 'power' when you get them set up though. But you dang near need a computer programming backround to figure out how to do it, and lot's of time.

I've ask my local Inventor/solidcam reseller (I'm in the US) the same qustions as you, and got the same response. Heck, the one Tech. support guy told me NOT to use the 'Hole Recognition Technology' because there isn't enough Cad data to support this function. But It's there. Makes me wonder what else is missing.

There's my thoughs.

[Brakeman Bob]

Hi Glovebox20, thanks for responding. Your thoughts match mine on the reason it isn't well documented and I think the developers have become bored with the technology and are just not interested in getting it to work properly, preferring to work on 'sexier' things like iMachining. It is the same with Machine Processes, which I find extremely useful. They haven't put any development into it for years, broke it really bady which SolidCAM 2011 (it set all the drilling cycles to "DRILL" and not the user defined cycles) and have brought out the Template technology which, without variables, is just a waste of effort.

The work I program has a lot of standard features such as bleed ports, leeplug drillings etc. and after putting the work in to get MP's working properly my code became very consistent. I was happy, the operators we happy, Quality were as near to happy as they ever get. Wonderful! Then SolidCAM go and break it. OK, it is fixed now but I had to rebuild all my processes.

The best way to get to grips with Machine Processes (courtesy of my SolidCAM guy) is to first program your feature in the CAM normally, then select all the SC jobs for the feature, right-click and select "Operation Group". The select the group, right-click again and select "Add Operating Group to Machining Process Table". The explode the group.

Go in to the MP table and start editing the newly greated Process. Be aware that you will need to set the data for each job separately, that system variables such as "clearance level" are very useful and that when editing variables directly it is best to delete the existing text because any edits you do defaults to 'add', not 'overwite'.

Thanks for your observations about Cutting Conditions. I have found that the data is held in an Excel spreadsheet resident in the Tool Tables folder, so I cloned that so I can play with it with out disrupting my work. I'll let you know how I get on.