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Mastercam popularity

You're right you didn't say "nobody"... you said "zero". Gee, how did I miss that one?
You're right, I did say say that. I shouldve clarified more that there tends to be main platforms that first tier suppliers standardize on and left it at that. I agree with what Empower said about a small mix supporting main platforms, that's generally accurate. MC is popular at the mid level and even more so at smaller businesses and mom and pop shops.

Regardless, and back to the original post, once MC started gaining momentum, the increasing main attraction to MC is businesses like the pool of hiring candidates and workers like the pool of openings. IMO it's unfortunate this has become what MC is best known for, but it's better to be known for that than nothing remarkable at all.
 
Hope they're doing better than the Blue Origin down here in Huntsville. From speaking with people in that shop, all they do is throw money at problems and expect success lol
I'm glad I didn't get the job I applied for five years ago. When my last place of employment folded up a number of my coworkers ended up there. At the beginning they were all enthusiastic, but now only one of them is still there.
 
I've been working on MasterCAM lathe programming recently, where the name of the game is getting your tools and your tool library set up right. As always MasterCAM makes things super non-intuitive. I had to go find an old thread on emastercam.com explaining how with a custom 3D tool, to get your cutting insert width and angles correct, something you might not even notice until you try to work with a parting or rectangular grooving tool and it doesn't behave right. MasterCAM somehow manages to actively stymie your intuition; for example when you establish the cutting plane for the tool, it accurately draws a profile around your cutting insert in the cutting plane, and another profile around the tool holder. BUT IT CAN'T USE THESE PROFILES TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE INSERT GEOMETRY, YOU HAVE TO PUT THOSE DIMENSIONS IN MANUALLY. Lord grant me patience, (just for MasterCAM though Lord please, I'm OK otherwise). The reason MasterCAM is popular I think is that once you do get your tools, you machine definition and your post set up right, it is very powerful and you can, when you know where the poorly located buttons are, make it do just about anything you want. Not to say other programs can't but we've definitely pushed our multiaxis surfacing capabilities by focused efforts with the program.
By the way, I noticed via a link from emastercam that if you are on maintenance with InHouse, they have recently made their training links available for free. I just downloaded their 763 page multiaxis mill manual. I think MasterCAM and the VARs must be getting the message that you cannot make such non-intuitive software and then try to charge people to learn how to use it. I should say as well, there have recently been quite a few more YouTube videos which have been very helpful, compared where things were even four or five years ago.
In my recent travels I came across this helpful channel. Check out the guy's manifesto here, he's not wrong.
 
As always MasterCAM makes things super non-intuitive.
That they do. It can be very frustrating!
Instead of Emastercam, I suggest the official forum. There are links to videos on YouTube for all kinds of things and those videos are unlisted.
Also there are links to all sorts of things that help out others.
 
Mastercam got in with the schools and for a while made it very easy to pirate for students.

Personally. I would never use it if my clients didn't buy it. The interface is complete garbage. (Been using it professionally since 1994 and currently have the latest release) There is NOTHING consistent or intuitive about it. The design environment is terrible and the toolpath environment is worse. But they have the market so I use it and people still buy it.
 
I wish I was better at Hypermill. So much capability, especially with higher end controls.
 
I would, when I have thought about hiring someone, I would need someone day one that is efficient enough to program set up and run their own parts, I don't have time to hold someone's hand and teach them. I know there's not a lot of selection with CAMWorks locally. I came to the conclusion if I found the right guy, rather than buy a second seat of CAMWorks and force him to learn what I am efficient in, I'd buy a seat of whatever the person could hit the floor running with. I've worked at 3 shops that did the same thing, rather than add a seat of whatever they had, they picked up a CAMWorks seat for me.
What happens when you leave, and the company needs to change something in one of those programs, and nobody knows how to use CAMWorks?
 
What happens when you leave, and the company needs to change something in one of those programs, and nobody knows how to use CAMWorks?
I currently own my own company and CAMWorks is my CAM of choice. If I was to hire someone and pick up a different CAM of their choice, and they left, I would just reprogram the part. I honestly don't like running other peoples programs, we all program differently and all though most the it really doesn't matter, a part is a part no matter how you got the finished part, watching someone else's program run in a machine can be painful!

But in the instances of when I was an employee at a shop that bought a seat of CAMWorks for me to use, in all reality, any decent programmer more than likely can open a different CAM software and figure out the basics pretty quick to post out a program or make some basic edits if need be. My previous company still uses some of my proven programs, I believe they have the NC files saved, but I did go back in some time after I was gone and walked a previous co worker through the basics so he could post out the program, but if it were me in that situation, like I said above I would just re program the part.
 
I currently own my own company and CAMWorks is my CAM of choice. If I was to hire someone and pick up a different CAM of their choice, and they left, I would just reprogram the part. I honestly don't like running other peoples programs, we all program differently and all though most the it really doesn't matter, a part is a part no matter how you got the finished part, watching someone else's program run in a machine can be painful!

But in the instances of when I was an employee at a shop that bought a seat of CAMWorks for me to use, in all reality, any decent programmer more than likely can open a different CAM software and figure out the basics pretty quick to post out a program or make some basic edits if need be. My previous company still uses some of my proven programs, I believe they have the NC files saved, but I did go back in some time after I was gone and walked a previous co worker through the basics so he could post out the program, but if it were me in that situation, like I said above I would just re program the part.
Running your own shop and being thee programmer is a good way to go out of business. Ask me how I know.
Congrats on finding a working formula.
 
What's cool about Mastercam is that it'll open decade(s)-old CAM files. For example MC 2023 will open MCX(1) files from 2007 or whenever it was released. Sometimes you just want to go in there and tweak one little thing. Something minor like a corner radius with many passes that isn't easy to finger bang (like a speed/feed), but would only take seconds to edit in the model and repost.

The thing about the manufacturing industry is that it covers a wide spectrum of parts from cutting edge stuff that'll be obsolete in a week, to parts that date back to the cold war. I've made C-130 parts where the prints were hand drawn. Some parts just don't change. The B-52's retirement date keeps getting pushed back.
 
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Running your own shop and being thee programmer is a good way to go out of business. Ask me how I know.
Congrats on finding a working formula.
I think the industry is about to get turned on its head with regards to programming and AI.

Human programmers will still exist, but the force multiplication factor of AI will allow one person to have the same output as 3+ programmers. More to the point, a business owner/operator will now have time to do these things himself/herself.

ChatGPT barely scratches the surface of what's already possible (close sources have told me that the internal stuff happening at the tech giants makes ChatGPT look like a toy). Nevertheless, look at what ChatGPT can already do:

Screenshot 2023-02-26 at 12.34.12 PM.png
Screenshot 2023-02-26 at 12.34.42 PM.png

It messed it up a bit, but I see the potential. I think it's just a matter of time before we can upload CAD files and get pretty usable programs. The key is the ability to ask the AI to make tweaks and have it learn your habits and conventions.

Verification software will likely see an uptick in sales.
 
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What's cool about Mastercam is that it'll open decade(s)-old CAM files. For example MC 2023 will open MCX(1) files from 2007 or whenever it was released. Sometimes you just want to go in there and tweak one little thing. Something minor like a corner radius with many passes that isn't easy to finger bang (like a speed/feed), but would only take seconds to edit in the model and repost.

The thing about the manufacturing industry is that it covers a wide spectrum of parts from cutting edge stuff that'll be obsolete in a week, to parts that date back to the cold war. I've made C-130 parts where the prints were hand drawn. Some parts just don't change. The B-52's retirement date keeps getting pushed back.
i dont know of any cam program that wont open old files...
 
i dont know of any cam program that wont open old files...
Hmm good point.

I guess I was thinking about cloud-based software along with certain CAM packages that were bought out and no longer exist.

Of course, you could always setup a VM to run the original software if needed, so there's that.
 
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Running your own shop and being thee programmer is a good way to go out of business. Ask me how I know.
Congrats on finding a working formula.
I've been doing it for years with no problems, and know many others that do it as well.

Programming is the easy part of my day, most the time my machines can't keep up, I'm always ahead on programming. I've built my TechDB in CAMWorks to work for me, and make programming incredibly efficient. I've built in many default settings based on material and operations created that I rarely have to select a tool, change feeds or speeds, DOC, step overs. Over the years I have defined the TechDB to how I program. It doesn't work on every part, but one of my biggest customer a majority of their parts, I don't even have to select any features. Create the stock, Extract Machinable Features, and Generate Toolpaths, less than 5 clicks I can have I'd say I can have 50% of my parts programmed. I do greatly benefit from this particular customer designing in SolidWorks and sending me SW native files, CAMWorks recognizes and sorts the threaded, reamed, counterbore holes, etc. and again will pull out the correct spot drill, drill, tap or reamer, etc. and depending on the size I have it pull in a chamfer tool and chamfer the hole prior to threading or reaming if the spot drill isn't big enough to do it.

As a one man shop, you have to find ways to make things work for yourself, this goes for my machine set ups as well. I created my own tool pre setter that the length offsets are universal from machine to machine, and based on my vise bed being Z0 in the machine. I don't have to ever jog down a tool to touch it off, I don't ever have to pick up a Z height in my machine based on above and how I program. I know where my vises are, and if I set a part on parallels my Z machine height is the parallel size.

Like I said, you have to find ways to make things work for you and be efficient. If your business failed, I highly doubt it was solely due to being the programmer.
 
I wish I was better at Hypermill. So much capability, especially with higher end controls.
What capability are you referring to?

From what I can see, posts have been optimized for siemens and heidenhain controls(on Grob/Hermle machine tools), but we have Fanuc 5x controls. The time and care taken to the former posts is far greater than what they've done with Fanuc or anything else. Do the Fanuc posts work? Yes. Are they optimized to reduce time wasting and un-intelligent moves? Not even close.

The bummer is I would love to optimize the posts myself, but no chance of me ever getting a Post Editor for Hypermill. The even bigger bummer is there only seems to be one really good post guy in our region/support circle and he is always busy with customers that are much bigger than us. There are other post developers in the circle, just not as experienced.

Still love the software, just not ideal that the key to unlocking my machines potential is in the hands of another.

Probably another reason why MC is super popular, the availability of proven posts for a variety of machines. Though, that could also depend on the reseller's post collection. I'm not sure if MC shares their post collection company wide, or if it's up to the reseller specifically. Our MC reseller quoted us Posts from a post development company that wasn't them or MC. YMMV
 
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What capability are you referring to?

From what I can see, posts have been optimized for siemens and heidenhain controls(on Grob/Hermle machine tools), but we have Fanuc 5x controls. The time and care taken to the former posts is far greater than what they've done with Fanuc or anything else. Do the Fanuc posts work? Yes. Are they optimized to reduce time wasting and un-intelligent moves? Not even close.

The bummer is I would love to optimize the posts myself, but no chance of me ever getting a Post Editor for Hypermill. The even bigger bummer is there only seems to be one really good post guy in our region/support circle and he is always busy with customers that are much bigger than us. There are other post developers in the circle, just not as experienced.

Still love the software, just not ideal that the key to unlocking my machines potential is in the hands of another.

Probably another reason why MC is super popular, the availability of proven posts for a variety of machines. Though, that could also depend on the reseller's post collection. I'm not sure if MC shares their post collection company wide, or if it's up to the reseller specifically. Our MC reseller quoted us Posts from a post development company that wasn't them or MC. YMMV
yeah Hypermill is lightyears ahead of MC integrating with higher end controls you mentioned. They actually do Vericut one better in that they can pull the current tool gauge lengths and fixture offsets out of the control to easily simulate actual condition of the setup. They can build a machine specific 'OM' simulation file that kinda makes vericut pointless.
And for simple user level post changes you don't have to learn MC's retardet MP post language to change a coolant code. It's all in a logical spreadsheet.
 








 
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