Old Boy needs advice/CNC sotware ?

[eglider]

Hello to all, Been a journeyman tool & die maker since the 70's. Am now with a large corp in their product engr dept model shop. New boss wants to go 100% cnc. Company has purchased ProE software for this change. My question. Since I have at least 10 more years to work and want to learn CNC programming should I invest my time and money to learn THIS system ?? What programming software is most prevelant out in the real world ? Mastercam?
Gibbs? I need some guidance here from you younger men.
FYI. I will be purchasing my own dedicated notebook and tutorial myself. Maybe can even quit my job to earn this. Is there a market for us 55+ older machinists ? Thanks in advance for your help.

[dertsap]

i would say gibbs or mastercam, they are both good softwares and most guys lean toward one or the other ,personally i find mastercam is the simpler of the two for drawing with

[Gncc50]

Originally Posted by eglider Hello to all, Been a journeyman tool & die maker since the 70's. Am now with a large corp in their product engr dept model shop. New boss wants to go 100% cnc. Company has purchased ProE software for this change. My question. Since I have at least 10 more years to work and want to learn CNC programming should I invest my time and money to learn THIS system ?? What programming software is most prevelant out in the real world ? Mastercam? Gibbs? I need some guidance here from you younger men. FYI. I will be purchasing my own dedicated notebook and tutorial myself. Maybe can even quit my job to earn this. Is there a market for us 55+ older machinists ? Thanks in advance for your help.

I have been and still am in pretty much the same situation. I am 55 years old, Tool & Die card in 1977, just started to learn CNC about 4 years ago. Had to learn everything on my own with very little to no help from anyone in my work place.

I think that your time will be well spent learning CNC. If you are like me once you get your first couple of parts made you will be hooked. I started out with BobCad because it was affordable. About a year and a half ago I bought One CNC professional (this is money out of my pocket). Which was a giant leap forward and was very easy to learn. Where I work they use FeatureCam it also seems it be a very good program. I bought my own so I could learn it as I had little access to the program at work. Therefore the price was a major factor for me and my budget. These are the only programs I have been exposed to. Of these I like OneCNC.

I think Pro E is strictly a Cad program so you will need another program to generate the G code. What would be best for you? Hard for me to say.
Is it coming out of your pocket? I think the most popular program is still MasterCam but others are taking an increasingly bigger share of their market. I have heard on this forum and others that the real high end programs are a little harder to learn because they give you so many different ways to program your part. If you have someone you can go to for advice that would be a tremendous help. If not these Forums have a great deal of good information.

In my area there seems to be a lot of jobs for operators/programmers. I think it is something you could definitely learn if you have the desire. For me it was just amazing to see something done in minutes that used to take me hours. There is still a little life left in us older guys.

I am sure you will get more advice from far more qualified people than myself. I just wanted to let you know us old dogs can still learn a few tricks.

[jc_eng]

Pro Engineer does have a CAM program built in. The benifit is that if you make a small change to the Pro/E model you can easily (in theory) update your CAM program and get a new G code file.

You will need to get the CAM part of Pro/E from your reseller, and you will need to get a Post for each machine.

I have worked with many companies that purchased Pro/E. It takes a long time to get designers and Engineers up to speed with Pro/E.

[eglider]

Gncc50, Thanks for the reply and encouraging words. All expenses to learn will be out of my pocket. I agree with you that Mastercam is most used program. Yesterday @ work sought out a mentor and we had a great discussion about my future. He agrees there is still alot we older fellas have to offer and most importantly agreed to help me out. Thanks again.

[Gncc50]

Sorry for the bad information concerning ProE. I stand corrected

[eglider]

Thanks for the info. I will be talking to my mentor @ work and see which way he thinks I should proceed. If ProE is available for free @ work I'll try that. Best regards and thanks again.

[bbern]

I'm 53, was lucky enough to get into NC in the '70's. Long hand G-code then Mastercam, then Gibbcam and now Gibbs and Pro-E. Just a quick comment about Pro-E, I find it kinda tedious, but powerfull, I still use Gibbs whenever I can. I guess just because I'm more familiar with it.
About those of us with more "life experience", CNC's may be using motors instead of us turning handles, but speed and feed, depth of cut, cutting tool choice, and a variety of other part making parameters, are in the years of experience you have. Very valuable knowlege, CNC or not.
just my $.02
bill

[Mike Mattera]

ProE has a pretty long learning curve. But if the company want to send you for training, I wouldn't pass it up. Mastercam is by far the most common Cam pkg out there. One reason for that is that it's used in so many different areas of manufacturing. Everything from 2x plasma cutters to 5 axis mills and lathes.

They have good solid capabilities for Job shops and nice toolpath options for mold and model shops. I would say the cost to own and learn is less than the others as well. There is a TON of educational material available for Mastercam.

Mike Mattera