The Mastercam Handbook Volume 1

This page will be devoted to trying to make the Mastercam Handbook Volume 1 better by providing specific suggestions on where it needs to be improved.

I feel the major problems with the Mastercam Handbook Volume 1 start with Chapter 6 and continue through Chapter 8. Instead of trying to document Drill Toolpaths in Chapter 6, Contour Toolpaths in Chapter 7 and Pocket Toolpaths in Chapter 8 and only at the end of the chapters work in a little actual programming, what I feel is really needed is to immediately start programming a moderately advanced part that has to be programmed from scratch and work what’s covered in the beginning of Chapters 6, 7 and 8 into the actual tutorial. The Servo Housing on page 5-26 will work well for this purpose.

Starting with Chapter 6 the focus should move to programming this real world part out of a chunk of say T6-6061 aluminum. That means the first thing we need to do is create a bounding box that has extra material and set up a WCS at the upper left or right corner of the bounding box. This would be on the solid jaw of the vise. I feel that this is the best place to properly describe what the WCS is all about and how to use it. Make sure that at a later point when the front of the Servo Housing is going to be machined that using the Relative Button in the WCS View Manager is explained and used in the example. This is also the best place to talk about the fact that the WCS arrows must align to how the part is going to sit on the machine / vise. This is never made clear in any documentation I have read! Neither is a good explanation of what the Relative button is for! How about we start machining this part using a Facing Toolpath because if I were programming and making this part I would face the stock first. As the part is machined you can work in the drill toolpaths, contour tool paths and pocketing toolpaths. This approach makes a hell of a lot more sense than the approach that is taken at present in Mastercam Handbook Volume 1 Chapters 6-8. This real world hands on approach is how most machinist really learn and is exactly the approach that should be taken as soon as possible and as much as possible!

Posted 6-17-2008:

I’ve done quite a bit of thinking in the last couple of days about how to make the Mastercam Handbook Volume 1 more complete and more helpful as it applies to real world job shop machining. I decided the best way to address some of the issues that I feel need to be covered, and are not currently covered, is with a second in depth part tutorial programming example that stresses what’s really important to machining job shops; finding ways to save time and do the job quicker. Unlike the first example, (The Servo Housing on page 5-26), which gets machined in a vise, I feel the second example needs to be clamped to a subplate. The reasons for needing to use another part not held in a vise are to address programming challenges that don’t usually come up with a vise held parts.

Using a second part programming example of a part clamped to a subplate the Mastercam Handbook author can now properly cover and show the power contained in the Mastercam Machining Operations Manager and how to actually make use of the power to save programming time. Specifically, copying and pasting existing operations in the Machining Operations Manager and then editing them instead of starting from scratch every time. Also not presently covered in the Mastercam Handbook Volume 1 is dragging and dropping existing geometry/chains into new machining operations rather than wasting time and rechaining from scratch.

When machining a part clamped to a subplate, it’s a very common occurance that you need to force the machine to stop with an M0 and add clamps and then remove the first set of clamps that are in the way. This is the best place to cover how to put in a stop.  It’s also the best time to explain how to use “Force tool change”  which is also not presently covered in Mastercam Handbook Volume 1.