My shop uses MasterCam which I am not familiar with. Can I use InventorHSM to write the programs and post to our machines? We have an Okuma and two large HAAS machining center. We also have two Mori Seiki twin turret turning centers.
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Yes that should be no problem . Not 100% sure about the 2 Mori’s tho. But they may not like you doing that if they are using MC they may not have access to the files (CAD/CAM) if you ever leave.
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If I saved the files to a shared drive and changed the file extension, would MC open the files? They want me to use MC but aren’t will to pay to get me training. I do most of my programming remotely and come into the shop twice a week to work on the CMM.
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I don’t think changing the extension would work but you should definitely try it. You could just export the solids created in Inventor as a .step so they would at least have a model to work with.
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Thank you!! That’s exactly what I will do. MC looks so complicated. Fusion and InventorHSM is straight forward.
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Yeah, MasterCam definitely has a higher learning curve, without question. If you do your programming in InventorHSM, Mastercam cannot open your CAM files. Proprietary format. It can open a good amount of CAD model formats, but not your CAM files from InventorHSM.
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Hi Darroll.
MC isn’t as bad as you might think. I have a ton of experience with Mastercam, so once we get the Small Group #27 started I can help you with that as well.
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Awesome!!! Thank you for that. I want to learn as much as I can.
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You’re right Chris,
Mastercam is not bad, its mainly the learning curve that is. I can honestly say, that I’ve progressed significantly faster in learning Autodesk Inventor and Fusion than in MasterCam. I remember before MasterCam when I was working with GibbsCam, that the learning curve there was much lower than MasterCam, and that was with having no prior CAD/CAM experience. Now that being said, I did spend many years working only in MasterCam, and I can say that it was painful to learn. Fast forward to now, and it works great for what it is, but anytime I need to try something new, figuring things out is not an easy task. Yes, it is easier, but not easy.
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@DarrollHough as others have mentioned yes you could post programs to the machine, but as they have mentioned there are the issues of file comparability and access to the native files. Something not mentioned, though hinted at by @Billy-Boyce, is the business perspective. Your decision to use software the company does not have license for puts the company in a position of using only you as a resource or needing to make an investment to purchase a license in order to access content they technically already own. It is something worth discussing with the company management to determine their position; not doing so IMHO is unprofessional.
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Thank you. I thought it wasn’t a good idea. That’s why I am learning their MC software. There’s a huge learning curve but I’m progressing nicely. I think…
@DarrollHough are you a contract employee or regular employee? You mentioned you work remotely so I am not clear on the relationship with the company. As a regular employee, I’d say that you are bound by their terms and what they are willing to offer regarding training. As a contract employee, you can to some extent dictate the terms of your contract, i.e. what software you will use and what they receive as a product. Also, as a contract employee you could wrap the expense of MasterCam training into your rate, allowing you to get the training on your own at their expense.
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I’m a contractor. I work for a company that does off-line programming for cmm and cnc.
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We also do robotics.
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What does this company want?
The company I work for don’t care what I use as long as it gets programmed. The company that wants the programming done would rather me us MC but is willing to let me use InventorHSM but not Fusion. Which is ok with me. They use Autodesk for their modeling anyway.
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The biggest issue you are going to have is that HSM does not support Twin Turret machines. And there is no easy way currently to handle wait codes within the posts.
The Haas’s would be fine and dependant on what Okuma you have you shouldn’t have too much of an issue with it.
Like I said before the issue you are going to have Is the twin turret Mori’s, if you are wanting to replace Mastercam with an Autodesk product that can handle the Mori’s you are looking at FeatureCAM.