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Automating toolpaths in MasterCam

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Hercules28

Materials
Nov 9, 2010
169
Dear All,

Does anybody have any experience with toolpath automation in Mastercam?
I am using solidworks and my pattern guy says that he has to rebuild the whole model with cutting paths in order to feed the program to the CNC.

This appears to be the bottleneck to the process. Is there any sophisticated piece of software that can do the job easier?
Any special interface between Solidworks and Mastercam?

Thanks.!
Herc.
 
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I spent a lot of time designing patterns in solidworks importing into mastercam then outputing gcode... It takes a bit, but I was able to do all of my design in solidworks, then just open the the solidworks model in mastercam. (SW2008/MC X) one thing that you have to do is get the axes correct. (solidworks uses different directions for x,y,z than mastercam.)

is his version of mastercam not able to open solidworks files?


Nick
 
I think the files are exported a XT but then the machinist manually inputs the cutting paths. So I guess my question is there. Can a software plan the cutting paths automatically?
 
While MasterCam does accespt .xmt files, you will get better results if you use the .sldprt files directly.

Not sure what automation is available in MC, but what are you looking for? If you want that 'EASY' button that produces g-code with one push it ain't happening in any CAM package anytime soon. If you want to pick a tool and then some surfaces and have the g-code, that is possible.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
 
If the part comes in with a different WCS than is desired, you have a couple of options: 1) if you have the Solids add-on then just do a Xform-rotate and it's done. If you don't have the Solids add-on, 2) then you will need to create a new WCS with the origin where you want it. Either way, there is no good reason to completely rebuild the entire model if you are able to import it as a solid. MC will import a native .sldprt file or step file. The closest thing to automatic toolpath generation that MC has is it's Feature Based Milling (FBM) tool but it's not really very good yet. It's clunky and takes a lot of time to set up and I wouldn't use it.

Can you give me some specific information on exactly what it is that your programmer is having trouble with?

John Acosta, GDTP S-0731
Engineering Technician
Inventor 2013
Mastercam X6
Smartcam 11.1
SSG, U.S. Army
Taji, Iraq OIF II
 
If it is family of parts or parts that require same operations then closest to "automation" is importing the operations from previous part and selecting new geometry.
 
There used to be a program called Camworks that was embedded in Solidworks that would generate G code files, whether or not it will interface with Mastercam is an unknown question.
B.E.
 
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