My remark 'leave 'Series Name' alone and associate the data in an invisible way' is not right. It should be 'don't associate the name of a 'Custom Table' with 'Series Name'. In other words, after choosing a Custom Table, leave the 'Series Name' alone.

Hi, Please attach some sample files or tables your manufacturer provides. PS. How do you manage to double-post comments? Does it happen when you use back/forward buttons on your browser??

Double post... no idea, I hit the 'Comment' button and it appeared twice. I was working on a Windows 11 laptop.

Some of it can be implemented. Other things.... What are thse A-Z again? Most (99%) of manufacturers specify cutting data in the format that I implemented in the app. I can't change it mid way so something like this and then have to support 2 systems. You can assign custom S&F to material groups. I will make a note to add some sort of rules to modify values according to material hardness and what not. Like sometimes they write (for material hardness > 45 reduce the speed by 50%) I will also add iso group descriptions in to the material DB. Not many people are using custom tables. The existing speeds and feeds engine is good enough without them. That is the whole purpose of it. So there is not gonna be any major changes there. Best regards.

What are thse A-Z again? Every tool series has for each material group (ISO) a letter that refers to a table with feeds for each diameter. For instance the tool series in the picture... For material group P13, it has a surface speed between 125 and 140 mm/min and the chip loads can be found in table I For material group M22, it has a surface speed of 65 to 80 and it uses table H. I believe this system is compatible with your 99%, in the end it results in traditional chip load tables, only via an extra step (table letter). So as it is now in HSMAdvisor, I have to define the chip loads for EVERY tool series over and over again, while in reality there are only 24 possible chip load tables. I'm only asking to have the ability to define chip load tables that are not related to a tool but that can be used by the feeds/speeds dialog. And to minimise modifications to the software, you could just copy the data from these tables to the one in the dialog (instead of using a reference).

In fact, the way you use the custom tables created in the list box of the dialog are almost usable except you shouldn't modify the surface speed and the series name. In fact I don't really get the purpose of these custom tables since the dialog itself already has chip loads in its own table. The more I think about it... these custom tables can do the trick if and only if : no cutting speed and series name are overwritten.

Perhaps I. Missing something. But why can't you just set it up the following way: Brand Name: MyToolMfg Series Name: A That's it! If I am not mistaken, this will accomplish exactly what you are trying to do.

Almost right but... - the table is associated with a material - the table and cutting speed are tight together

Tied... not tight :-)

Why don't you simply add a check box 'Generic' to this screen? Such a table doesn't modify the 'Series Name' or the cutting speed. Brand Name ______________________ [X] Generic Table Name _______________________ (read only when unchecked) Series Name ________________________ (read only when checked) Insert Name ________________________ (read only when checked)

I won't do it because it doesn't make sense to me a the moment. You can already define the "Plantom-L" tables. Then you enter the tool into the speeds and feeds page, and just select the table from the Custom Tables drop-down... This way you can immediately apply the table you want to the currently entered tool data:

Well Eldar, it's not to me to tell you how to solve this. But... your proposition doesn't work: 1. Choosing a table implies a cutting speed. There should be no relation between them. Two different tools can share the same table yet can have different cutting speeds. 2. The tables should be INDEPENDANT of the material. When I define a table for a certain material, I cannot use this table for another material, because the table data is modified by the program. It's perfectly possible that a tool uses a table for a certain material while another tool uses the same table for another material. 3. Tables defined for a certain tool TYPE (i.e. Solid End Mill) are not available for another tool type (i.e. Roughing End Mill). Thanks for thinking it over, Serge

Serge, Thank you for explaining. I understand now what you want to do, but changing HSMAdvisor to do that would require a lot of work for questionable benefit. From the side of the manufacturer it does make a lot of sense. They can just say "hey, for this tool and that material just use table B for chip load and and speed 150m/min"... But no one else uses this system. It's true that it requires less space on the catalogue and does not have any repetition, but it also requires a junction table to implement the many-to-many relationship. From the UI/UX perspective it would be a lot harder to explain to people than the simple Brand/Series relationship.... Perhaps this is the reason most manufacturers still use the the verbose system. Sorry. Just can't to that at the moment.

And what about a "Paste from" button that copies and pastes data from a textfile? I can make text files A.txt through X.txt, put them in the HSMAdvisor user directory and the paste from button opens a file explorer window for *.txt (or whatever specific extension you want). If you don't want to alter the interface, implement 'Alt+Paste'. And please, initialize the material in the 'Custom Speeds and Feeds' dialog with the material from main window (and not Very soft low-carbon steels). Thanks, Serge

Sarge, Sounds like you need an excel sheet or something to accomplish what you want outside of HSMAdvisor. If I were you and still wanted to use manufacturer data I would just save exact tools with whatever speed/feed override manufacturer suggests and not even touch the custom tables. Are you getting better/much different results using your manufacturers suggestions than HSMAdvisor's? If so then all you need use an excel sheet. Best regards.

Forget it Eldar... I will use your program as it is. 1. I will compare your data with those of the manufacturer. 2. I will create tables with Manufacturer - Series Name - Insert Name (with the letter A-X) and standard material: Phantom-34214-L (and material, let's say Very Low Carbon Steel ) When I need to define chip loads for a certain tool, I will select the appropriate standard material and table with a letter, 'Copy', select the material for the tool, 'Paste'. * Please, don't forget the ISO-materials (why don't you supply the material list in XML so we can edit ourselves). * A detail... when I create a table, Manufacturer and Series Name are automatically filled it with those from the tool. But not the Insert Name. Why? * Finally, take care of tab orders, which are not always consistent. Therefore I sometimes have to search the field that has the focus. * When changing material, the chip load table is loaded with your data, including the diameters. Why don't you keep the diameters and apply a conversion factor to the chip loads (factor related to hardness difference between the 2 materials) ? Thanks for listening and sorry I took so much time, Serge PS I'm a developer too (C, C++, C#)

Eldar?

Hi what's up? I don't have time to look at all those things right now. But i did add it all to the ticket.

Ok, I'll wait