Re: Dump your CAM & get Cimatron

Scott wrote:
Black Dragon wrote:
Neurosis wrote:

I'll back that statement. Mastercam blows for drilling cycles. I ran
Cimatron for 15 years prior to our shop switching to Mastercam and i
was severely dissapointed. We switched to Mastercam four years ago
and it has been nothing but a dissapointment to me.
No first hand experience myself yet, but our Cimatron gurus were
showing me how it automatically adjusts feed rates at intersections
when drilling intersecting water lines in molds for example. That
alone is priceless when you do a lot of unattended / semi-attended
mold machining. No such functionality like that in Mastercam without
creating separate operations for each hole.

Like peck drilling without ripping the lips off the drill bit. In order to compensate we either have to cut and paste for hours, giving each bite a dwell, or take the drill bits and put a vertical flat on each bit with stones, by hand. Otherwise you are puuling the bit out while it is producing a chip, then jamming the bit back into an interrupted surface. Eats drills, one of the most common and simple operations, yet no one at Mastercam seems to be able to write a path program with chip breaking and dwell, with operator choice of time or spindle revs) on each peck.

Mastercam has a marketing monolith, a juggernaut. Dassault puts out Solidworks and Catia, both of which are clunky.

I started with APT and COMPACT on a Schlumberger workstation running two 10" floppies and two 5.5" floppies (Z80 with 8 megs of RAM took a half hour to boot), then Bridgeport EZCAM, then Mastercam 6. That and a buck and a quarter gets me a cup of coffee.

I used to be able to *read* BCD tape, ran a Bridgeport with a Slosyn 7 (we called it a slo seven) 2.5 axis with pnuematic tape readers and pnuematic 3rd axis, most CNC programmers today dont even know what that means. Tool changers, HAH! Bar pushers and chip pullers.

Been fighting the shit ever since. CIMCO editor has been my best friend, it allows post processor editing at ease as well.

I have played with Catia, UGS, Solidworks, have ten years in with Inventor, 20 with Autocad, you guys have motivated me to try out Cimatron.
















The ONLY problem with Cimitron is it doesn't always play nice with others.... Exports generally suck.
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Relevant Pages

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  • Re: anybody using masterscam x5 yet?
    ... Cimatron users have been switching to Mastercam. ...   NOW...do that and cimatron blows mastercam out of the water like a little ... - from non-standard molds, standard molds with inserts, to family ...
    (alt.machines.cnc)
  • Re: anybody using masterscam x5 yet?
    ... Cimatron users have been switching to Mastercam. ...   NOW...do that and cimatron blows mastercam out of the water like a little ... molds is a challenge that mold makers face on a daily basis. ...
    (alt.machines.cnc)