Comparing help please

[pgf545]

I need some help for you guys. I have been tasked to take over the programming here for our shop. Right now we program at the machine using the Hurco conversional control. It works great for about 95 percent of the parts we do. The other 5 percent or so we have been using Pro Manfacturing. My boss currently is the only one who know how to use that package and he is getting busier with other tasks and sometimes has to stop what he is doing to do a program for the shop floor. He wants me to take over that task and to increase the use of offline programming to help improve flow and mistakes. Here is the comparsion that I need. Our company uses Pro E to make all the drawings and they are using Wildfire 2.0. We do have the Wildfire software for the manfacturing but no one here knows how to use it. After talking to my boss he wants me to take a class but in the mean time we discussed getting Mastercam instead. What so you guys think about the differences between the two. It looks to me like the Mastercam might be less of a learning curve than trying to get up to speed with the Pro. hope this hasn't been to long and thanks for the help.

[Independent CNC]

Take any training your offered even if you may never use it. I would tend to lean towards another CAM software unless everything on the CAD side is being done in Pro E.

Independent CNC Programmer
www.ctcn.net/~3kings/

[pgf545]

Thanks for the response. Right now we are trying to determine if it is worth the expense. The cost of the training is about 1/2 of what it is going to cost for the Mastercam. All of our engineering group uses Wildfire so I am not sure how it will intergrate with another cam package. I have no experience with any cam packages so everything will be new. This is a totally new venture for me.