[ianglover]

Hi we are thinking of getting solidcam at our place, and as I do 90% of the programming offline I have reservations about the software doing all the posts and them working 100%. My boss says that he would like all the editing done through solidcam and nothing done on the machine, I find this impossible to achieve as every time I put the same job back on I have to do at least some editing to get the job spot on, it just seems I will be re-drawing the part to alter a chamfer or editing the post to change a cut depth ect and making a simple edit into a long drawn out procedure. What are your views?

[R.M.S.]

Ive worked with a few cam systems. Including the newest mastercam for Soliworks. I love solidcam hands down.
Once you have a post set up for your machine you will never need to edit it or at least I dont ever need to edit mine. Unless I change features. Like adding 4th axis 5th axis , coolant features stuff like that. The programs is solid and worth it. Just make sure your PC is up to it . Solidcam needs a decent computer set up to be on. Otherwise it will crash and freeze. I have a laptop dedicated to Solidworks and Solidcam only . Its a quad core AMD with a terabyte of harddrive space. Before that it was on an older computer that couldnt handle it. Big change when I switched.
Your Boss and programmers will be happy with the program I was.
Goodluck

[imachining-6061]

Hope that people barking on the software crash will read this post

[Brakeman Bob]

It took me a while, probably about a year, to get my 5X post for our Hermle C20U to state where I will send posted code straight out to the machine and expect no CAM rework. In the early months I was editing the post almost every other day but this reduced and now I make edits to the post about once every year or two (usually because SolidCAM has changed some functionality in the CAM output).

I am a little puzzled by your comment about 'altering a chamfer'. Your post will not prevent things like that - if you program it right and it looks good in SolidVerify but the chamfer is too deep or shallow when it is cut, then it is a setting issue that can be overcome by using a wear offset or changing the tool length or radius compensation. Producing parts on a CNC is a partnership between the programmer and the set-up person. We have a policy here of anything that can't be controlled on the machine by using tool or work offsets MUST be go through the CAM - to do anything else in 5 axis work is courting disaster. Some of our old school programmers balked at this but once they'd had a nasty scare or worse still, a crash, due to using 'on machine edits' they soon came around.

[ianglover]

Hi yes was jus making an example, we do a lot of intricate work that sometimes involves going over the part again to knock off burrs created by milling ect or after screwcutting.