Esprit vs Mastercam comparison

[julespilot]

Hello, I'm looking for a comprehensive comparison between Esprit and Mastercam - can anyone help me?

[surfsup]

Yea, there is none. The more I use ESPRIT the more I am blown away by what it can do.

[kesparate]

comprehensive? no
but i have run both. i started with esprite and have since moved to MasterCam X3.
largely what i have seen is that esprite is more flexible, but mastercam is faster.
esprite is geometry based so you any line you can manage to draw you can cut. anyway you like. i ran esprite in a shop that made one off industrial automation, so this was a really valuable thing for me. i spent more than a bit of time re-machining in features that the engineers changed or screwed up. everything took time though, and i mean everything. (though to cover my ass i should note that i was not using the latest version of esprite)

master cam is more feature based. i find it more annoying to build stuff from scratch or to modify features on imported models. though by modify features i mostly mean slap random lines through them and cut bits off. mastercam seems to be more subject to upstream errors, so if you get crappy solid models your going to be unhappy. that said, if your model's good or once you get your geometry built, toolpathing it is way easier. cutting a really dense feature set is easier to controll and organize. the verification bits are much easier to understand.

i did find esprite post files a bit easier to read. the language just seemed a bit closer to conversational. though, it's clearly not, and mucking around in a post file is done at ones own risk.

long story short i didn't find one to be vastly superior to the other. if you make goofball prototypes that need lots of tweaking in, i would suggest esprite. if you want to get a model and make a part in minimum time i'd think mastercam.

i've never used either for long run stuff so i can't say which would be better. esprite has better tooling and run reports, but mastercam seems to have more process management functionality. flip a coin.....

[DIFF OVER]

I find as an AE at a machine dist, i get the most calls from Gibbs and Mastercam users. Esprit for milling has been a blessing, and Esprit MOLD is simply fantastic. Esprit for mill / turn is also wonderfull. I see many customers also programming grinders with Esprit. In my area there are far more Mastercam users that Esprit. I have heard that the Esprit customer site is really good. You can get posts for almost everything, and Esprit is also feature based. I do think all the higher end systems are real close. I wish more customers would get REAL parts programmed and test the posted code.

I think people are programming robots with mastercam now, but both systems can also handle on machine probing. thats cool.

[Mikiemo]

We have been programming with mastercam x2 for about year now,and are considering esprit for our multiaxis machines. we have an integrex 400 IV ST, and a hermle c-40 with heidenhain control. Both are a sob in mastercam, because of verify interface problems. have to use camplete for hermle, and matrix cam for integrex.

[surfsup]

master cam is more feature based.

esprit is feature based as well, perhaps you should get some training? esprit actually has more feature recognition and automation than mastercam.

[kesparate]

guess i didn't qualify that very well. the esprite version i was using was older. i have a copy of the newest version of esprite (it's good to be OEM), but haven't had a chance to use it for anything yet. also have mastercam x4 which is what i use daily. if i could get the friggan time to look at esprite who knows...

[thebowman]

Originally Posted by julespilot Hello, I'm looking for a comprehensive comparison between Esprit and Mastercam - can anyone help me?

The independent Mastercam Forum has a thead on this:

www.mastercamforum.com

[surfsup]

Thanks for the link, can't find that discussion though. Seems to have been deleted (maybe because it was too pro-ESPRIT). Don't see much activity there.

[thebowman]

Originally Posted by surfsup Thanks for the link, can't find that discussion though. Seems to have been deleted (maybe because it was too pro-ESPRIT). Don't see much activity there.

Owner of that forum doesn't play that way. Here is the link:

http://www.mastercamforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23

You are correct it needs more activity.

[cbr_speedster]

I've been an avid Esprit user for several years now and can't say enough about it. In the past I started with SmartCAM, then EdgeCAM and find they don't hold a candle to Esprit. You can create features from solid models or any geometry you made need to cut the part. I worked with a guy that used MasterCAM and he was impressed with Esprit when I programmed an Okuma Multus with no hand editting. I'm currently programming Citizen lathes with Esprit and don't edit anything. It helps to have post experiance but the biggest thing I found was having a good machine setup so things work correctly in the simulation. It took a couple weeks to get the machine modeled but once complete it sure was time well spent. Here's a photo of what it looks like in Simulation mode. I personally haven't used MasterCAM and hear others talk highly about it. I think it all depends on what machine and parts your machining. We use Esprit to program EDM's, VMC's, HMC's, Swiss, Integrex, Multus and even the older machines like Acroloc. Happy machining.