FBM Mill problems

[Lugy]

Morning, I'm trying to get to grips with the FBM Mill feature to program a job I'm about to run. The drawing file was received as a STP file and loaded into Matercam. I'm having a few problems with the tooling part, if I select the "Create tool as necessary" option it seems to work fine, however if I deselect it and only use a tool library with tooling I actually have I get the following message;

Originally Posted by Mastercam FBM Warnings Feature 1 Zone 4-TOP Rest mill tool search failed

It's coming up on an event using a 2mm End Mill, the tool part of the event (if that makes any sense!) says "Tool does not exist." Now if I manually change the tool to a 2mm cutter and regenerate it works fine.

I'm guessing my problem is something to do with the tool library, I don't understand why though. I've set it up with tooling it used when I had"create tool as necessary" selected, IE it created 25, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 8, 6, 3, 2 and 1.5mm end mills, my library consists of a 25, 16, 12, 6, 5, 3, 2 and 1.5mm.

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions to get this working?

[Mike Mattera]

Just let it pick from the library.

[TheBigJW]

From what I understand it was one of those very common parts of Mastercam that never really worked. Was added so they could put it in the brochure but never finished it. There are much better FBM options out there.

John

[stuflo]

I am having complete nightmare issues with tool libraries sticking since upgrading to x6. But that is another story. It did lead me to search in the operation configurations and try and edit those. I did find that when using fbm drill it wouldn't pull in tools all of the time even if the correct library was selected in the machine operation panel. When going into the operations configurations it calls a default tool library from there. I think this may be a weak link to the config settings because everything in mastercam points to 1 tool library apart from in the operations defaults. Most of the time it works n the odd occasion it doesn't. A quick way round it was to select all tools and move them up into the upper pane when in a program and using tool manager at the bottom of the tootpath tab..New to mastercam and not in front of a pc with mc and going from memory so excuse poor description.

[stuflo]

I am having complete nightmare issues with tool libraries sticking since upgrading to x6. But that is another story. It did lead me to search in the operation configurations and try and edit those. I did find that when using fbm drill it wouldn't pull in tools all of the time even if the correct library was selected in the machine operation panel. When going into the operations configurations it calls a default tool library from there. I think this may be a weak link to the config settings because everything in mastercam points to 1 tool library apart from in the operations defaults. Most of the time it works n the odd occasion it doesn't. A quick way round it was to select all tools and move them up into the upper pane when in a program and using tool manager at the bottom of the tootpath tab..New to mastercam and not in front of a pc with mc and going from memory so excuse poor description.

[cadcam]

I would get with your dealer to review your install.

[nikolaiownz]

Anyone actualy use FBM on a daily basis? i never got it working lol... seems like its broken

[Rstewart]

There's no one out there using FBM mill or drill to Efficiently make parts in my opinion.

[cadcam]

There are people using it but it is for simpler style parts like housing and so on.