FSWizard: Online now has Service workers!

It is a cool new technology that allows otherwise online applications to run completely offline.

From now on FSWizard will be able to cache all of its files on your mobile or PC device.

Also a reminder: you can "Install" FSWizard right from your browser by going to menu and hitting "Add to Home Screen"
Then FSWizard will be able to run in full-screen mode.

Depending on your usage, Chrome may actually prompt you to do that automatically.

Cheers!

I try to not comment on things outside of my immediate area of knowledge or specialization.
But this one caught my eye and I thought it would be interesting to share with you guys.

So the news in a nutshell is Amazon applying discounts to products that third-party vendors are selling on its platform.

For example. Company "A" is selling its smartphone for $1000.
That is the price of the product on their online store and brick-and-mortar stores and other platforms like for example Amazon.

It is obvious $1000 is pretty steep. But company A does not want to devalue its brand and wants its customers feel special when they part with their hard-earned money.

Along comes Amazon and decides that it wants to compete with everybody for the lowest possible price for this particular phone.

So Amazon applies a 10% discount to the phone in our example.
Customer gets the product cheaper and Amazon pays the difference, so that the 3-rd party seller gets the full price for its product.

Everyone should be happy ... EXCEPT!

Many vendors do not want to provide discounts.
Or when they do they want to control when and how the discount happens.

What those vendors are saying is that this Amazon's tactic devalues their brand and draws customers away from their stores in favor of amazon.

Once people get used to the fact that "Phone A costs $900", they will not be willing to shell out $1000 ever again. That price will seem like unjustified increase in price and an attempt to gouge the customers.
Besides when people learn that "everything is cheaper at Amazon" nobody will go to the producer's own stores any more!

I think this story tells a lot about dangers of relying (or even using at all) selling platforms like Amazon.

Not only this applies to Amazon, but also things like Google Play, iTunes and many others.
Nothing is stopping them to one day decide to adjust your pricing policy.

I am glad I did not jump into Amazon's App store idea and I kind of questioned my involvement with iTunes and Google Play.

This is the reason (and the fact that I pay 30% of my revenue to said stores) I will try to keep the new FSWizard calculator a web app that can be used on any device without the need for any store.

I can handle the hosting and selling on my own.

Here is one of the news story on the subject.

I have just uploaded the HSMAdvisor hook for MasterCAM 2018.

That calls for a drink!

The C++/CRL interop that runs on the back end has been developed over 2 years ago and i have not opened it much since.
Because there were some breaking changes in 2018, i had to reopen the can of worms and ... whew! That was not eazy to remember all the horrible things i have done so long ago ago!

Any way. Now we have a nice lineup of HSMAdvisor plugins for 3 latest MasterCam versions (X9, 2017 and 2018). 

I think I am going to keep the maximum number of supported and updated versions to 3 - one current and for 2 years in the past.

With this out of the way, we have much more exciting things in store.

There is lots of work left on FSWizard online app.

I will look into developing a plugin for other CAM packages...

Oh, by the way. I almost forgot!

October 25, 2013 marks the first time FSWizard standalone app was released for PC!
Even though it later was renamed to HSMAdvisor, I like to consider it the birth date of HSMAdvisor

Looking 4 years into the past, I realize how much work has been put into this app:
http://zero-divide.net/?shell_id=151&article_id=4265_fswizard-stanadalone 

It has been fun and exciting 4 years.

And I am sure as hell going to continue!

Ever since we stopped offering free educational licenses, there has been steady demand for either free or discounted license options for colleges and schools.

We could not give out free licenses any longer because they still cost money in hosting and support. 

So today after a lot of consideration we decided  to start offering special Educational HSMAdvisor License Package 

We do feel it is important to support education so this license packs huge savings. For example a small class can get 10 Lifetime Floating seats for just $467. Or 30 seats for just under a thousand bucks.

The advertised number of seats can also include special "Use at Home" seats for students and staff. Those seats will require a different license credentials and thus will not affect the seats installed in the classroom.

There is only Lifetime Floating license option available because we did not want college staff going through hoops every year trying to get renewal approved.

As you can see we really went out of our way to offer educators something that will be insanely helpful for their students with figuring out machining speeds and feeds and hopefully launching them into the career!

Again check out here for more details https://hsmadvisor.com/?page=News&shell_id=222&article_id=4973_hsmadvisor-educational-license

Cheers!

I have done quite some work on HSMAdvisor in the last couple of weeks.

Let's just cover real quick the new things in this update.

New Shoulder Diameter field

You can now use Shoulder Diameter field to account for T-Slot and Woodruff cutters reduced neck.
Also the deflection calculation and torque limits this functionality relies on this have been updated and improved.

Yep, HSMAdvisor now takes into account reduced neck of the cutter and warns you if it is close to snapping off!

Reordering Tool Libraries 

To re-order your tool libraries, just go to Tool Database page and right-click on any tool library tab.
Then select "Reorder Tool Libraries" and use arrow keys to move your libraries up and down the list.

New Speed and Feed Overrides sliders

All sliders in the Speeds and Feeds Adjustments are have been improved to match the rest rest of the adjustments sliders in the app.

Best regards!

Howdy everybody!

I hope you guys enjoyed your weekend.

Mine was a productive one.

FSWizard Online has had a big update and now Materials list contains all material groups:

There is a catch, however: In the free version, ONLY material groups are available.

To get all the avialable materials you need to go to Settings, click on the "Customer Login" button and enter your FSWizard PRO credentials.

Also in this update I fixed the Thread Milling tool type glitch and added inverted trig functions to the Scientific Calc:

Will keep you posted.

Cheers!

As you might have noticed, our FSWizard.com Online Speed and Feed Calculator has a limit of just 3 workpiece materials.

But if you are our customer you can get access to all the latest materials using your FSWizard login details.
Just go to Menu->Settings->Customer Login and enter your First name, Last name and email.

Once authorized, you will be able to use all available materials!

By the way we have made a decision that FSWizard Online will have all other features and calculators available for free. So even if you are not paying, you can still find this calculator quite useful!

Speaking of which. I just added Triangle Calculator, and Flat Head and Socket Head Cap Screw reference widgets.

Enjoy!

Better Material Cross Reference

Yes you can now use HSMAdvisor with non-US/UNS material standards!

Our users have asked for better integration between HSMAdvisor's built-in Materials library and the thing called Cross Reference table and finally here it is!

Now when you click on the "More" button next to the "Material" drop-down list...

... the updated Material Cross Reference dialog appears.

It has new Search feature to easily find the material you are looking for.

The table also has a new column called "Name" that contains the name of the closest material found in the HSMAdvisor's database.
Please note that the name of the matching material does not necessarily need to be matching the proper standard name.

Standards that have been matched to the materials are in bold font style.

When you select the proper standard, you click on the OK button and the matching material will be selected in the HSMAdvisor's Speeds and Feeds tab.

In addition to the changes above quite a few new materials were added to the fold as well.

Better Tool Deflection

I felt that the previous tool deflection model was not perfect as it did not include taper of the End Mill's shoulder.
To solve the issue we added "Tapered Shoulder" checkbox next to the "Shoulder Len." field.

If you suggested new features in the past, you know how much I hate to add new controls...
But i just had to in this case. There was just no other way!

Now when this box is checked, the shoulder will have a shape of expanding taper connecting with the shank diameter.
The slope of the taper is controlled entirely by the length of the Shoulder and diameter of the shank.

Check out the tool display for the straight versus tapered shoulder:

With all engagement and feed values identical the sample on the left shows 0.0036" deflection and the sample on the right shows just 0.001" of deflection.

Which is the way it should be!

Does your "other" calculator do the same?...don't think so!

Things to Do Next....

In the near-term scope of the development I am planning to:

• Release an update for MasterCAM 2018 hook that has been in the works for a few weeks.
• Combine the data from the Materials Cross Reference dialog with the HSMAdvisor's own Materials database And add Favorite Materials functionality.
  This might require a complete rework of the Material selection UI. Perhaps the whole thing will be moved into a separate window to prevent cluttering the Speeds and Feeds page.

Will keep you updated.

Regards!

We have many helpful articles over at HSMAdvisor Help portal. But beacuse of that very reason not many website visitors actually read any of them.
It is a pitty that most advanced users will never actually visit the help section, because they already know how to operate HSMAdvisor.

And this particular one, I believe, is too useful (I just updated it to include more info) for my customers and other machinists to keep it burried in some help section that few ever read.

So here you go:

This is a short Application Guide for use of different cutting tool materials and coatings.

Tool Materials and Coatings are listed from least preferable to most preferable.
(IE: line "Recommended tool materials: HSS, HSCobalt, Carbide, Diamond" means that HSS is the least preferable material and Diamond is the Most preferable one)

The following guidelines are mostly for milling operations, but, with some reservations, can be applied for turning and drilling as well.

Tool Material

• Aluminum and other non-ferrous metals:
  Recommended tool materials: HSS, HSCobalt, Carbide, Diamond
  Recommended number of flutes:2 or 3
  Recommended coolant: Flood Coolant for all tool materials, reduce cutting depth and speed for less than ideal cooling situations
• Abrasive non-ferrous and non-metall materials:
  Recommended tool materials: HSS, HSCobalt, Carbide, Diamond
  Recommended number of flutes:2 or 3
  Recommended coolant: Flood Coolant for all tool materials, reduce cutting depth and speed for less than ideal cooling situations
• Mild and Tool Steels
  Recommended tool materials:HSS, HSCobalt, Carbide
  Recommended number of flutes: 4 for regular machining; 4+ for finishing and HSM machining   
  Recommended coolant for HSS and HSCObalt tooling: Flood, reduce cutting depth and speed for less than ideal coolant situations
  Recommended coolant for Carbide tooling: Dry or mist airblast to clear the chips
• Nikel and Cobalt Ferrous super alloys
  Recommended tool materials:HSCobalt, Carbide, Ceramics
  Recommended number of flutes: 3-4 for regular machining; 4+ for finishing and HSM machining   
  Recommended coolant for HSCobalt and Carbide: High pressure, high volume flood coolant
  Recommended coolant for Ceramics: None
• Titanium alloys
  Recommended tool materials: HSCobalt, Carbide
  Recommended number of flutes: 3-4 for regular machining; 4+ for finishing and HSM machining   
  Recommended coolant: High pressure, high volume flood coolant

Tool Coating

Coating improves wear and temperature resistance of the cutting edge.
General rules of thumb:

• Aluminum and other non-abrasive non-ferrous metals
  Recommended coatings:No Coating (bright finish), TiCN, ZrN, TiB
  Recommended coolant: Flood, reduce cutting depth and speed for less than ideal coolant situations
• Abrasive non-ferrous and non-metall materials:
  Recommended coatings: TiAlN,AlTiN, AlCrN, Diamond
  Recommended coolant: Flood, reduce cutting depth and speed for less than ideal coolant situations
• Mild and tool Steels
  Recommended coatings:TiN, TiCN, TiAlN, AlTiN, AlCrN
  Recommended coolant for HSS and HSCObalt tooling: Flood, reduce cutting depth and speed for less than ideal coolant situations
  Recommended coolant for Carbide tooling: Dry or mist airblast to clear the chips
• Nikel and Cobalt Ferrous super alloys
  Recommended coatings:TiN, TiCN, TiAlN, AlTiN, AlCrN
  Recommended coolant: High pressure, high volume flood coolant
• Titanium alloys
  Recommended coatings:No coating (bright finish); Super hard AlCrN, AlTiN, TiAlN nano coatings
  Recommended coolant: High pressure, high volume flood coolant

Do you think this information is not complete or you need more?

Drop us a line.

See Contact Details for ways to reach us

Today was quite productive.

All the remaining milling tool types have been finished.

The last one to complete was Chamfering tool type:

Looking at the HSMAdvisor's tool graphic on the right i realize how useful it is to understand where your tool engagement is.
Especially so for tapered, Ballnose and Chamfering tools.

FSWizard does not yet have that functionality, but i will definitely try to add it in one of the updates after the initial release.