PARTMAKER USERS

[SWISS-TECH]

ANY PARTMAKER USERS OUT THERE?

[yoopertool]

I dont use it personally, but the company I work for does. Sometimes the program is a blessing to have, and other times i am better off writing a program by hand! Oh well, it keeps things exciting! How does everyone else feel about it?

[SWISS-TECH]

I feel the same way you do. Most of the time I write the program long hand. When it comes to 3D machining or engraving I like it alot. The posts for our swiss machines are not exactly right and it gets aggrevating sometimes.

[ghyman]

Same here... it works OK for generating complex tool paths, but I always would end up doing most everything longhand.

[yoopertool]

I have come to the general conclusion that the actual program Partmaker is a decent program. The area where it is lacking is in the post-processors, atleast for swiss machines. It seems like all that our programmers do is complain how everything looks great when they run a simulation, but the code which it creates usually needs manual editing to even make it run. Does anybody have any posts which they created/modified which work well on citizens or stars? I hate to see what seems to be a good program have its name tarnished because of poor posts. Thanks everyone!

[iamkat68]

I use Partmaker every day, it is a good program, although some manual editing is generally neccesary. ut it does a good job of reducing the amount of time it takes to write complex programs.

[Lee Olson]

I don't use partmaker myself but we do use it in our shop. We have had to work with the company that we bought the software from to get the post figured out. We post to our nakumura with usually no problems. Our citizens on the other hand have problems. Productivity the company that does the tranining on partmaker is working on that problem for us. Good luck

[DDM]

Partmaker was one of the biggest mistakes that our company ever made. We mainly got it for our star SV-32. I don't think that the people who wrote the program even know what the machine looks like let alone look at the books for a sample program. In the time that it takes to go through the program and generate something that won't work on the machine I can have 4 programs wrote and debugged. Word of advice STAY AWAY!!! The portion of the program for the turn mills and mills isn't much better.

Carl

[sidswiss]

Amen, brother. I've been using it for about 8 months now and don't like it one bit. The problems I have with Citizen posts isn't as bad as the Star posts, but it still requires major rewriting. I have e-mailed my post problems to Partmaker Support and after several weeks of receiving modified posts (as many as four), the problem still isn't fixed. As a matter of fact, each new post I get comes with another set of problems. Don't they ever try these posts on an actuall machine? The guys at Star have been to our shop for programming seminars and tell us to stick with programming at the machine as Partmaker is good for making pretty pictures on your PC, but not good for running a machine. Unfortunetly, us programmers don't have many choices when it comes to programming software for screw machines. I see here on these forums that Esprit has it's post issues also. I am waiting for the more repitible software companies (such as Mastercam) to finally get on board with the screw machine industry. Until then, keep your pencils sharp and your calculater handy.

[dcskid]

Does anyone use it for Hardinge? We are receiving a new turning machine with live tooling and this is the software they suggest. I will be responsible for programming it and the rest of our turning centers and mills. Is there any good experiences with the mills?

[cybor32001]

You will have to learn to config your post for your style of programming. I have finally reconfiged all our post for our SV-32's, SR-20's, and the SB-16 to post directly to the machine's. On a second note I have reconfiged the Mori post to do the same. Just hang in there and it does pay off. There is no other software that even comes close to the power this software has for Swiss. We also have Mastercam and UG that take's alot of time to even run right in the swiss machines. Partmaker will save you so much time although longhand will always be there for backup!

[DDM]

But the problem is you have to configure something that should have already been done. For right now I'm sticking to programming by hand, it's quicker and more reliable and readable to the next person.

Carl