Sometimes people ask me: "I tried your calculator, and i liked it, but it seems to me a little too aggressive...do you actually do any testing?"

Well, to those I say that not only i do testing, but i run production jobs 100% calculated with my own HSMAdvisor.

Many machinists say that nothing beats an experienced operator holding his hand on feed hold button and playing with speed and feed override trying to find the "sweet spot" where cutting speed and feed rate are maximized and chatter is eliminated or reduced.

And it is correct, but not any machinist is experienced or actually knows what he is doing.
Many machinists also finish their apprenticeship program and never learn a single thing about new tooling types and materials since. They bag years of experience, but their knowledge is stuck on a level it was when they first got their license.

Also not a single person can possibly know cutting conditions for hundreds of materials and remember all of the jobs he had ever ran.

This is where tool database comes in.

Not only can you save tools to cut down and in many cases eliminate entering parameters for every calculation.
But you can (and should) save cutting data for each particular case.

A single tool entry can contain an unlimited number of cuts attached to it, so machinist never has to remember everything.

Here is a i made video of slotting D2 with variable helix hi-performace endmill.

Material: D-2 Tool Steel 200-250 HB
Tool: 0.500in 4FL Carbide TiAlN coated Solid HP End Mill
Speed: 360.0 SFM/ 2751.6 RPM
Feed: 0.0023 ipt/ 0.0094 ipr/ 25.76 ipm

Engagement:  DOC=0.330 in   WOC=0.500 in

The ONLY FREE CNC Speeds and Feeds Calcualtor

Confidently calculate cutting conditions for hundreds of work-piece materials and of combinations of tooling types and coatings.

• Accurately Estimate cutting forces involved in machining process and prevent tool breakage.
• Estimate machine power requirement and help choose best tool for the job.
• Suggest safe and practical Axial and Radial engagement values.
• Compensate for reduced-shank, long and extra-long tools.
• Improve cycle times and tool life
• UNIQUE feature that allows to set comfortable levels of cutter torque and deflection and prevent cutter breakage.
• Ideal for use as your Dynamic / Thoroidal / Truemill calculator

Please visit the project page for download link, support and instructions.
http://zero-divide.net/index.php?page=FSWizard_SA

Needed to do alot of side drilling/milling/tapping on our moulds lately.

So I quickly designed and whipped up this custom indexing fixture that allows me to mount almost anything to it.

Face plate has several tooling dowel holes on front side to locate work piece.
On the back of face plate there are 36 3/8 dia reamed holes spaced 10 Degree apart.

Housing has a big 5.0"Dia pocket in the front into which the face plate's hub fits in with 0.001" clearance
Housing also has corresponding 3/8dia reamed holes spaced apart 9 degrees. This allows me to index the face plate with 1 degree increment.

Design time:2 hours, Machining time: 2 hours.

Pictures are here:

Tired of printing out Operation lists and then wasting time adding setup information by hand?

There is a neat and easy way to replace standard Operations and Tooling lists with something very compact and usable.

Here are config files i use at my work to create Setup Sheets and tooling lists right from SurfCam.

1. First make sure you backup you Operations.cfg and Tooling.cfg files in case you want to go back (VERY NOT likely)
   Those can be found inside your V5 or V6\Config directory.
2. Unpack contents of the attached ZIP folder.
3. Copy .CFG files found within into your V5 or V6\Config folder.
4. Copy folder "images" into "C:\Surfcam" directory, if you want also tool images to show with tooling list.
5. Go to SurfCam Options and in section Setup Sheet select "Current" from several other choises.

Thats it!!

UPDATE!!!!!!

• Operations list NOW highlights table rows when you move the mouse over them.
• When you select ANY text on Operations List, the same text will be highlighted over the whole page!!!

Download current file below

Samples are below:

Surfcam_custom_operations_cfg.zip Size:0.11 MB

Here are some Okuma Captain 1200 program samples for work with live tooling.
Samples are quite big so READ full article