Anyone use PartMaker Mill-Turn Or Mill

[littlebrewman]

I am researching new cad/cam software for myself and the shop i work in.We have one swiss turn lathe(tsugami),2 ZT mori seiki mill turn,1 SL mori seiki, 1 doosan puma 2 axis lathe,1 A55 Makino Horizontal mill,1 A81 Makino Horizontal Mill,and 1 fadal Vertical mill.Has anyone had any experience using partmaker to program these machines and if so what has it been?The biggestproblem i have with our current software(Mastercam) is the posts.They seem to have nothing.Also is partmaker easy to draw in.I have found mastercam to be very easy to draw with as a cad package.Thanks for any input that you can give.

[billcain]

Hi Littlebrewman,

I work here at PartMaker as an applications engineer. We have Posts for all Tsugami's, Mori's, Doosan,s and even the Makino Horizontal. The posts for those machines except for the Makino I can vouch for and since we work closely with all those manufactors, if there is a problem, it's only a phone call away. I have no hands on with the Makino post myself so I can't say but I know our customer with it seems to have no issues with it. If you give a call 215-643-5077, one of our saleman can give you a demo over the web and answer any questions you might have. Thanks

[petriej]

Hello, I am transitioning from Gibbs to Partmaker in our lathe department and Partmaker is the best program that I have seen so far in terms of post customization. We have received great support in terms of making the post work correctly with your machine.

For instance I run a DMG CTX310VF - four axis lathe with Fanuc 32i controller. Most of these machines have the Siemens, and Partmaker has been very good about working with us to get all of the little odd syntax that this controller necessitates in the post.

Partmaker also allows you to customize your post. I would suggest taking part in one of the post customization webinars that is offered through their site.

[JOHN SOUTH]

be careful before you purchase partmaker. for a one channel machine it will post fine as would any other package. once you get to two and three channel swiss style equipment the posts require heavy modifications to work properly. we have not used one multi channel machine where partmaker has posted correct numbers "out of the box". the machines would have crashed or just alarmed out.

for an example, after the post for an star sv-20 has been worked on for about two years it still requires hand editing so it can run properly once posted. this type of machine has been around since at least 1998. why doesn't this post work properly by now?

i do not believe that partmaker has spent time with the machine builders to be familiar with thier equipment. i know this for a fact from making calls to different machine tool builders.

[billcain]

Hi John,

I am sorry to hear you have not gotten what you need. I looked for a John South in our records and could not find anyone by that name.

Please also remember that there are many SV models that have been changed over the years.

As we have many SV users and have good relations with Star I do not understand your comments about the manufactures. I am on first name basis with Applications Engineers from Star, Citizen, Tsugami, Mori, Nakamura, and more.

To be quite honest most isssues arise when programmers perfer to change the "Style" of the output. Our posts allow for many situations you might or might now run into. The complextity of the machine and the post are very touchy. Also many times there is just a setting inside the software which needs to be changed.

John, if your still on Maintenance, I would like to help you through these issues.

be careful before you purchase partmaker. for a one channel machine it will post fine as would any other package. once you get to two and three channel swiss style equipment the posts require heavy modifications to work properly. we have not used one multi channel machine where partmaker has posted correct numbers "out of the box". the machines would have crashed or just alarmed out.

for an example, after the post for an star sv-20 has been worked on for about two years it still requires hand editing so it can run properly once posted. this type of machine has been around since at least 1998. why doesn't this post work properly by now?

i do not believe that partmaker has spent time with the machine builders to be familiar with thier equipment. i know this for a fact from making calls to different machine tool builders.

[JOHN SOUTH]

I clearly understand that machines change over the years. But basic functionality of the machine posts are incorrect. The posts were repaired by partmaker and kept as an revision change correcting your product.

Russ Adams pushed your software as it will produce parts "out of the box", which is not true. Again every machine we have tried the posts on had to be modified just to work properly.

In the economy we are in not many shops have the time to spend making your posts work correctly. Also, keeping the maintenance agreement going becomes very expensive.

You really should advertise your product as software that will operate with the buyer being able to commit a lot of time working on the posts. As I mentioned before, even after two years of work on a simple two channel SV there is still hand editing that MUST be done to operate correctly.

Another thought would be if partmaker would some type of financially reimbursement when your customers make corrections to your posts. We spend the time findind and telling partmaker of the mistakes and partmaker reaps the benifits of the corrections.

[billcain]

"John"

Since you obviously did not use your real name and I dont know who you work for, I can not try to explain the situation that caused this problem with you.

As I said, the main problems that occur are not the fact the post will not create good parts, it does for many people, but usually the case of "I don't like this code" or "This is not how we do it". At points like that we try and work with the customer to get what they want, but it does not always happen. The main reason as to why this can happen is because the customer wont accept code that works and refuses to comprmize.

I have a customer simular to that with the SV post. They have modified it to the point where I doubt anything would work right. This happened because they did not like the code, not that it did not work.

Again, I am sorry you have had bad experiance, but I can asure you that it not the normal case.

Bill Cain

I clearly understand that machines change over the years. But basic functionality of the machine posts are incorrect. The posts were repaired by partmaker and kept as an revision change correcting your product.

Russ Adams pushed your software as it will produce parts "out of the box", which is not true. Again every machine we have tried the posts on had to be modified just to work properly.

In the economy we are in not many shops have the time to spend making your posts work correctly. Also, keeping the maintenance agreement going becomes very expensive.

You really should advertise your product as software that will operate with the buyer being able to commit a lot of time working on the posts. As I mentioned before, even after two years of work on a simple two channel SV there is still hand editing that MUST be done to operate correctly.

Another thought would be if partmaker would some type of financially reimbursement when your customers make corrections to your posts. We spend the time findind and telling partmaker of the mistakes and partmaker reaps the benifits of the corrections.

[JOHN SOUTH]

it is not the point of not liking the code your posts produce. the code is WRONG. machines will not work the way they are posted from your software. i will say it again, once we informed you of several mistakes, you then corrected the post and reissued it as a new revision.

i have 30+ years of experience setting up, running and programming machine tools.

honestly, we have posted out code for four different machines and every one of them had alarms or were stopped before they crashed.

we work hand and hand with the machine tool builders and some of the changes we have suggested to the machine tool builders have been put into the ladders for new machines.

please don't insult us, machinist/programmers by saying somebody who sits behind a desk reading from a machines operation manual knows more about how equipment operates.

you know your software but partmaker does not know how these machines run.

what confused me is how when i was at a partmaker training class about a year ago, the individual who runs your training department has never ran or set up a lathe. he told us he operated a wire edm machine.

[billcain]

"john" or whomever you are

I am sorry and did not mean to offend you. We could go back and forth quoting our resumes and experiance and offending each other. I will only say that I have 20 years of experance with Swiss machine that has not been behind a desk and most of that with Star machines.

Hopefully you find software that satisfies you at some point.

Bill Cain

it is not the point of not liking the code your posts produce. the code is WRONG. machines will not work the way they are posted from your software. i will say it again, once we informed you of several mistakes, you then corrected the post and reissued it as a new revision.

i have 30+ years of experience setting up, running and programming machine tools.

honestly, we have posted out code for four different machines and every one of them had alarms or were stopped before they crashed.

we work hand and hand with the machine tool builders and some of the changes we have suggested to the machine tool builders have been put into the ladders for new machines.

please don't insult us, machinist/programmers by saying somebody who sits behind a desk reading from a machines operation manual knows more about how equipment operates.

you know your software but partmaker does not know how these machines run.

what confused me is how when i was at a partmaker training class about a year ago, the individual who runs your training department has never ran or set up a lathe. he told us he operated a wire edm machine.

[Glenn Ellis]

Hello John. Normally I don’t reply to postings like yours but prospective customers may read your posting so I thought it best to reply with a short review of my experience. I have 17 years in the progressive die industry; Programming and operating Haas Mills and Charmilles wire machines, running a CNC department of 11 machines and 4 employees. In addition 5 of those years were designing the progressive dies. I taught in the public school system for 2 years before coming to PartMaker. As lead trainer for PartMaker CAM software I travel both domestic and internationally training new customers the basics and giving existing customers advanced training. I really love what I do.
As a teacher I know that people (teens or adults) can come to a class with preconceived ideas about a subject or product, or an attitude against it. I would recommend you come back in for training to go over things that you may have missed. Our sales department maybe able to arrange that at a reduced cost or even free. Please contact them at your convenience.
Glenn Ellis

[JOHN SOUTH]

All I would like to say, is that your sales people should be honest about what your software can and can not do.

Bill you were very helpful and knowledgable about your sofware.

I feel that partmaker is making posts for many machines and does not have time to or does not want to spend the money to test the post to ensure they work properly.

Glen, that does sound impressive. But, partmaker is supposed to be all about software for lathes especially swiss style. Your lack of knowledge of lathes was very obvious and when I was there this was very frustrating.

[petriej]

I am researching new cad/cam software for myself and the shop i work in.We have one swiss turn lathe(tsugami),2 ZT mori seiki mill turn,1 SL mori seiki, 1 doosan puma 2 axis lathe,1 A55 Makino Horizontal mill,1 A81 Makino Horizontal Mill,and 1 fadal Vertical mill.Has anyone had any experience using partmaker to program these machines and if so what has it been?The biggestproblem i have with our current software(Mastercam) is the posts.They seem to have nothing.Also is partmaker easy to draw in.I have found mastercam to be very easy to draw with as a cad package.Thanks for any input that you can give.

Littlebrewman, I find Partmaker very easy to draw in. You can easily trim and extend lines with a very intuitive interface. You don't need to explode intersected segments to trim them or remove them as each intersection bisects the segment which allows you to individually manipulate the segment (also similar to other Delcam products). Post support is second to none (yes, we are on maintenance.) On more than one occasion I have submitted post modifications and received updated posts within 1hr. I have a less than common machine/control combination which has lead to a small amount of R&D to get the post perfect. But, I do not believe in hand editing as it takes too much time, and increases the chances for having a crash. I had the post perfect from the last software – still a great competitors program and it took some time. I foresee absolutely no reasons that will inhibit the Partmaker post from being perfect as well.