[machinster]

When it first came out there was a lot of hype about TrueMill, but it seems to have died out now. SurfCam's current website barely mentions it and TrueMill's website hasn't been updated in 2 years, what happend...?

I use TrueMill once in a while, I'm just wondering if anyone else does. What do you think about it..? Do you like it..? Does it work for you..?

:stickpoke

[moldcore]

I believe TrueMill is a separate entity from Surfcam now and you have to pay extra for it. The developers of TrueMill have sold it to other CAM companies under various names to be used in their software as well. I have used it on occasion but since we only cut aluminum molds, the opportunity to use it hasn’t come up very often. As for Surfcams website… Who knows what’s going on there. I get the impression that the company is operating in a fog.

[justinstewart80]

I work for the Surfcam dealer in Indiana as the Head of Applications support and Training and lots of our customers use TrueMill often. It is a rough pocketing routine that is very powerful. There is no Fog either at Surfware we just released Surfcam 6 and it has some really nice new features. I learned Cam software on Mastercam and I prefer Surfcam hands down.

[machinster]

I don't know if there is fog at SurfCam or not, but the last time I tried to use TruMill on a 3 axis part with SRM on and 3 different sized cutters the amount of air-cutting and re-cutting was atrocious. No way that I could send a program that bad out to the shop for production. Maintenance is running out in a few months and I'm still running V5.2, its probably not worth upgrading to 6 (hey what happend to the V?) since there were few changes made and none at all to TrueMill.

The reason that I asked this question originally is that I am really frustrated with SurfCam. After over 5 years, TrueMill isn't much better than when it was when it was released. 2AX works OK, but in 3AX, with multiple tools and SRM, it aircuts, recuts and wastes about 30% of the toolpath motion. If you only use 1 tool and switch SRM off, its not as bad but there is no rest machining with TruMill, the software has no way of knowing what's left from the first tool. So, now here I am spending days cleaning it up and doing it the old way. If you don't believe me try it...

The TrueMill website lists licensed users of their engagement milling strategy as 1. SurfCam 2. Nobody.... 3. Nobody.... and it looks like their site hasn't been updated in 2 years, they're advertising things from 2010 on there. So then, is that it for TrueMill, did they throw in the towel....?

Now, when I see what the guys that split off from SurfCam have, with their own refined and improved version of the same basic software, I see what I wish I had. Their licensed list of users is rather long, maybe Surfcam should consider licensing their product, instead of "developing" their own. Ultimately, SurfCam users lost out because the 3 of them couldn't keep it together, as usual its likely someone got greedy, I won't speculate on who it might have been...

[zero_divide]

TrueMill works.
We are machining aluminum molds and huge pressure boxes for them. Also aluminum.

Out of 3 guys i am the only one who bothers to use Truemill. And my cycle times are always at least 2 or even 3 times better.

Its all about the shape of the part. You need to try different options. Different stepovers and such.

This ->CNC Tricks Home will help you with starting speeds and feeds. There is on online version to calculate your speeds on the go, and a Windows standalone program. All absolutely free of charge.

As for the SRM: it also works (duh). But in there it is also all about choosing the right parameters.

BTW. unfortunately V5.2 blows. V6 is not better. Everything is very slow. Verification takes at least 10-14 seconds to load. Opening a toolpath from the manager takes about 2-3 seconds. When you multiply it number of times during a day works out to be alot of wasted time.

Still i like SC more than MC. You get a G-Code ready to run faster.
V5.0 in my view is one of the most stable versions after v3.0 came out.

[moldcore]

I agree that TrueMill works rather well but does take few more minutes to program and fine tune. Most the molds we do are relatively small and roughing only take a few minutes when needed and many of the molds are made up of lots of inserts. We would use it more if the cavity area was larger or if we were doing multiples of the same parts where time adds up.

I haven’t seen any slow downs using V6. Verify is faster in V6 but display resolution is not very good when using very small cutters (less than 1/16) for some reason. Still takes too long to post sometimes. Even a short program will take 5-10 seconds to display, but if you do another right after it only takes 1-2 seconds. I’ve experienced this in the last few releases.

[machinster]

I started this thread and asked if anyone was using TrueMill because I have wondered for sometime if anyone actually uses TrueMill on a day to day basis. While it does make for nice machining demonstrations, does anyone actually use it in part production..?

I have had a serious problem with TM for several years, where on large, flat aircraft parts with a lot of pockets, though nothing really fancy; TrueMill using TSRM would cut an area very nicely with the larger Tool1, like a 1" em then the next smaller Tool2. Like a 1/2" em would Air-Cut the entire area where the 1" had already been before moving to do the rest-machining. V4 seemed better than V5 or 6 but then again, my memory is not so good anymore...

Anyways...

It seemed to me that such a glaring problem would be reported by a lot of those daily TM users and that the problem would be fixed without my input. I hate being a complainer anway, but after 4 releases of TM, and years of fixing the same problems in my NC Programs almost daily, I had finally had enough, so I decided to speak up and I sent a perfect example of my problem to SW HQ. I expected to be told that this was common and they were working on the problem, Surely, I would see a solution right away or maybe I was doing something wrong, try this and that and happiness would be sure to follow.

NOPE, I was told they had never seen this problem and My case would be turned over to their crack development team.... Their support staffer told me how I could create intersect splines to create each separate pocket at each depth and then I could 2d machine each pocket at each depth one at a time. Really...? Manually create data for 40 various sized pockets that the software does not do, despite all the fancy full color, glossy advertisments saying it will solve all my problems, after 4 years of TM development, and now I'm looking at a stack of parts to program and then another stack of programs to fix.... Really, It was not really the answer that I had expected to get...?

So It just doesn't seem likely or possible that many SC users use TM, if there were a lot of users they would have been seeing the same problems that I am. SurfCam itself looks to be doing little to spruce it up other than creating a new pocketing demo for another machine tool show, so we know that they bust it out for tool shows. And their once Super Fancy TrueMill Website looks like an abandoned Tiki Bar on a deserted island in the middle of the Ocean....

[Charlie Gary]

That answer doesn't surprise me at all. I remember when V3 came out, with cool new stuff. In a hurry I wrote a program and sent it out to a machine. A feed-between move plowed right through the part, so I contacted Surfware to let them know something wasn't right. They asked some questions, I gave some answers, and then they said I needed to upgrade my operating system. The V3 CD said right on it Windows2000 Professional was one of the OSs supported, but when I mentioned that I was told "Not any more". That was the last time I used anything beyond V2.

[moldcore]

Now you know what I meant when I said the company seemed to be operating in a fog. No direction, no movement, just stuck in the past.

[camaru]

I use surfcam every day and use it for short run and tooling. i dont have new equipment and i cut steel, titanium stainless and aluminum. Truemill is not Surfcam, its a tool in Surfcam and it does not fit every time but it does work. as far as im concerned truemill is best used when the depth of cut is at least 1.5 times diameter of the tool, then its a perfect tool but if its shallow, less than 3/4 of the diameter then I use standard pocketing stuff.

[junky]

I use Truemill on a daily basis, we machine a lot of 304 and Ti, it saves tool life and increases production. I work with an older machinist that refuses to use it and I can beat his run times by half. I have done some testing on aluminum and I came to the conclusion I can machine it faster without truemill using standard tool pathing.

[mnmattie]

We use TrueMill daily on 15-5 Stainless

[Anders6612]

Truemill etc is great, i use it on a small 7.5kw 3 axis machine.
Perfect for underpowered machines, but the programs can be a bit
big for budget systems.
I think it also scares many operators, it is quite an aggressive
way to cut, and the code make no sense. It may also wear down the motors faster to, if operating att very high feeds. AC or linear is prefered.

We are going over to Mastercam now, but Truemill is quite powerful to,
and we have found very good pinmills for the job. (important as hell)

It is like cutting wood with a knife, the way to go.