Matercam is the premium CADCAM package with all kinds of shit you will never use. Some its speeds and feeds you get out its library for different materials is insane. I wrote my own. I went to their headquarters for training in 1992 and again in 2016? I didn't need it then but the company was paying, it was near my home town so I went. Management expects those programs to come off the computer and run perfect, you just have to explain to them maybe in a perfect world but not here. There were times I called their TS and by the time, sometimes days, they got back to me and I had already figured it out and sometimes told them lol. I went to work in one place back in the day and the owner was trying to run like a 60k-100k line via DNC down to one of the machines and it just wasn't working. He asked if there was something I could do. Using parametric programming I got it down to about under 300 lines but I couldn't get it to do one thing. I call FADAL, the machine makers TS, for three days they couldn't figure it our. I finally got that done and informed them how to do it. There are some very simple things that CADCAM software programs just can't do. In that case I would have to write it in. Since no one reads code anymore, they don't realize the software packages do not write the code in the most conscise logical manner, and to follow it on screen, there is a ton of coding etc that it spits out that isn't needed. It makes it difficult to follow quickly. Aslo, programs should be written from the zero on the blueprint so the program mathces the blueprint. Many don't care anymore and they will put the reference zero anywhere they chose because the computer makes it so easy. Fortunately Mastercam allowed you to take their post processors and massage them, which I don't beilive any of the others do? Anyway, I would go in and rewrite the post processors for the different controllers so mastercam would spit out the programs in the shortest most logical manners devoid of non needed codes etc., and I would always reference the zero to the zero on the print, that way if the hole on the print was X1., Y1. the program said the same and was easy to follow. One thing that came about that REALLY pissed me off was when draftspeople started leaving dimensions off the print and we were told to reference the solid. Make my job more difficult why don't you. When I became head of inspection at one place I told management we were not wasting out time doing that. That the machinists had to know the dimensions of the parts they were machining and if they didn't bring me a print with the dimensions for the operations they were performing the parts weren't getting inspected. Management balked and I told them I wasn't asking them to do anyting I didn't do when I was on the floor running ther HAAS unit. If my guys didn't have the expertise get the dimensions off the solid I would get the dimensions for them and that I expected every other machine unit in the shop to do the same. Damn, sometimes I really miss it and laugh my ass off at some the things that went down, hassling with engineers and inspectors and machinists. Sometimes I would throw something out there and everyone would get arguing and I would just walk away laughing. Machinists are a strange lot, very few of them wound up in the profession by choice and it sure made for a smorgasbord of personalities. I quit high school at 16, I thought I was going to be a musician, so I do believe you get out what you put in. I had to hit the books and learn all the math I missed, which was most of it, on my own.
