Up here in Canada we are celebrating family day today!

I wish you all more time to spend with your loved ones.

Because of that and just "because" all HSMAdvisor licenses are on hefty 30% sale.

Get your work done faster and go home to your wife and kids!

Version v0.735 has just been released.

We now have 2 new tool types: Counterbore and Chamfer Mill.
They were added to match with similar tools in most CAM packages

Also we now have tool simulation graphics in the Results' area new Tool tab.

Here is a simulation of the new Chamfer Tool type:

Capture Wizard now has Tab Name field that allows Wizard to only capture the Target window when selcted tab is active.

Also Detault Tool Type, Tool Material and Tool coating fields were added.
you can now specify which tool will be picked if Wizard fails to recognise the tool type.

Oh pardon me!

Forgot to mention: We now have Surfcam 5.2, BobCAD-CAM v25 and v26 integration profiles.
you can load those from Profile manager tab on Capture Wizard form.

On a side note somebody from SprutCAM has asked me to create a profile for their package.
Looke like they have demo available for download, so i will probably do that very soon.
As far as I know, I do not really have any customers using that CAM.

But hey, Things change!

Manufacturing seems to be going back to North America, but thousands of college graduates who finish various CNC -related courses have a very shallow understanding of metal-cutting processes and forces involved.

Frankly i believe Speeds and Feeds should be a separate subject all together.

To help students fill the gap, I am offering US and Canadian educational facilities help with setting up their classes with free HSMAdvisor seats.

Update: Countries of EU and England are now included into the offer!

The total maximum number of seats handed out will be limited to 200.

If you represent a college or a university and want to sign up, please send me an email with your name, position, and number of seats requested.

My email address is cnc@zero-divide.net

I will set up your license and reply with information on how to obtain the license keys.

If you know a place that could benefit from this offer, please share this message.

Eldar Gerfanov, developer of HSMAdvisor and FSWizard machinists calculators.

HSMAdvisor has got a brand new CAD/CAM integration profiles manager.

It is now possible to import/export profiles to and from HSMAdvisor.

For now i only had time to add SurfCAM 5.2 to the list. MasterCAM x2 is coming a little later.

While using Capture Wizard yields very satisfactory results in most cases, it does not take a long time to set up either.
The whole procedure of creating a brand new profile takes just about 30 minutes.

If you created your own profile for a CAM system that is not already in the lest, please send it to my e-mail address: cnc@zero-divide.net or create a thread on the support forums. There you can upload XML files directly.

I would like to add it to the next release for everyone to enjoy.

Very good things happen to those who contribute!

If you need any help figuring out CAD/CAM integration. please refer to "HSMAdvisor Tutorials" category of this site, create a thread on support forums, or send me an email!

We all love getting positive feedback on anything we do.

For example hearing "good job" from our bosses. Or "nice work" from our co-workers....
Okay, Okay bosses do not normally tell anyone "good job", but anyway that would be nice!

I also like reading e-mails which people all over the world send thanking me for my work on FSWizard and HSMAdvisor calculators.
Telling their success stories and suggesting new features.

Most seem very surprised when they send a question on weekend and receive an answer withing a couple of hours.

Often people send pictures of their work and links to their own web sites.

It is nice that more and more professional machinists are using my software, but seeing it help create a work of art is a special feeling.

One of recent customers Daniel Gentile, uses HSMAdvisor to calculate cutting parameters for his custom knife production business.

Here is what he has to say:

HSMAdvisor enables me to efficiently do the math that saves me not just a lot of time as I can confidently often use higher speeds but also a lot of money, as I tend to break less of those expensive 2 and 3mm carbide tools that see a lot of use on my folder production. Also because I work with a dozen different materials - from D2 steel to Titanium to Bronze - and a lot of different cutter types and finish requirements it's just nice not to have to work with "guess-work" for the feeds and speeds.

Daniel Gentile, owner of FERRUM D Gentile, custom Knives & forging classes.

Here is a link to his web site.
https://www.dgentile.com/

Here is a link to his portfolio page filled by pattern welded forged blades and katanas!
https://www.dgentile.com/portfolio.html

If you are a fan of old school forging, custom knives and basically anything to do with knives and blacksmithing, you have got to check it out!

Another week another update!

A few days ago a topic popped up in CNCZone's BobCad-CAM forums regarding why speeds and feeds in above mentioned BobCAM were so crazy and unworkable.

Users were complaining and raving about such a "simple" thing like a good speed/feed calculator being missing from there.

This is actually a trend in pretty much any other CAM software package.

They sell tool to create toolpaths.
Many give tools to create 2D geometry and even real solids.

But very few CAM packages offer anything that even remotely resembles working starting cutting parameters.

It does seem bizarre and strange. But every CAM program "knows" type of material being worked on. It knows type of tool, its diameter and length.
It even knows flute length, cutting depth, width, ramp angle... pretty much everything.

But given all that they are unable to combine all this data and produce Speed and Feed that would not either break the cutter or melt it into the work-piece!

Anyway. Back to the topic.

Someone on that forum thread mentioned my old FSWizard.
It sparked quite a lot of interest, and i popped in and dropped a link to the latest version of HSMAdvisor, so that they actually try and see what a good calc can do.

As a result i have received a ton of emails filled with suggestions and thank-yous.

Apparently many did not even know anything about it and were surprised how well it worked for them.
One guy who just bought a license even said that his copy already paid for itself several times over within the first couple of days of using it!

To thank for enthusiasm, i quickly implemented some of those suggestions and i am now releasing them in this version 0.710

New thing are

• Adjustable font size and style. (in Settings) Allows to adjust global application font.
• Adjustable default values for Speed&Feed Overrides, Tool Productivity, Deflection and Torque Limits. (in Settings) You can now set values to which overrides reset by default.
• New Plunge Feedrate field shows up for milling tools.
  Non-Center cutting tools like Indexed endmills etc. will have plunge feed equal Zero.

Thanks everybody for support and suggestions!

As usual you can download the latest release on the Download page.

After almost 2 months since the last release the next update has just been uploaded to the google Play Store.

Version 1.32 follows in the footsteps of the HSMAdvisor.

It now too has latest material definitions and an updated custom material drop-down list.

This list now expands to the size of the screen overriding default Samsung's scroller (that they stole from iPhone).

Biggest update yet is a new Tap and Form Tap tool types.
You can now get not only cutting speed and feedrate for taps, but also calculate the best drill size for desired thread percentage.

New material list Tap Tap hole parameters

Hello guys,

I have just uploaded a newest update to HSMAdvisor v0.702.

One of the users reported several problems over this weekend and i have just fixed them.

I strongly encourage anyone who has downloaded previous version to download and install this update.

It adds UN thread type and fixes "strange" cutting speeds for stainless steels and fixes graphcal bugs caused by "Larger font size" settings on your desktop.

Also i have reset all trial counters, so that anyone who still does not have a license has another 30 days to try my software!

I have long wanted to update HSMAdvisor Screenshots page

It has finally been done and now it includes the list of all features too.

Check it out, you may find things in there you did not even know about ;)

Happy New Year !

First of all i would like to thank everybody for their continuing support and feedback - without you my work would not be this rewarding and fun.
This holiday season sale has been a success and it is only reassuring me that i am moving in the right direction regarding development of this software.

Also 20 days after the very first release of FSWizard for iOS, sales for it and the Android versions have been going very strong. Which means i will be putting even more effort into improving the mobile versions as well.

New things in HSMAdvisor 0.701:

• Cut and Form taps have been added.
• Boring Bar has been added to the tool type list
• Scallop calculator has been added for ballnose type endmills

Updated and fixed things:

• Effective diameter for tapered endmills (like V-Bits) has been fixed
• Deflection model for endmills has been improved
• BallNose endmills are now considered slotting (floor milling) only when their WOC is set equal to the diameter of the tool.
  When WOC is not equal to the tip Dia, it is presumed the cutter is milling the wall rather than the floor
• Some Tool Geometry fields have been moved to a new tab.

Again after this release i will shift my attention back to mobile versions of FSWizard

Tapping Tool Type BallNose Mill Scallop Calc