True mill

[bassn_07]

Hey Guys,

I've been using Surfcam Velocity 4 more often now and I must say I'm very impressed with True mill. As of lately we've been doing a ton of 304 stainless flanges which require quite a bit of hogging. I've been pre-driling my entry point because I've been in fear of breaking my end mills. Are most people doing the same with true mill or just using the helical ramp to feed in.

The most common size end mill I've been using is a Helical HSVR 1/2 4 Flute standard length. My depth of cut is full diameter, SFM 240 RPM, and cutting at 15 IPM. I haven't played around with my tool engagement angle yet due to the fact I'm not familiar with it. Everything is set at default on the default page and the same goes with my helical plunge settings. A majority of the parts are running on Haas. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

[Chrliev]

Sometimes I predrill for plunging sometimes I don't, depends on materials but I also use it on the outsides of parts. Draw a material profile and set it up and choose this as an excess material boundary...

Try some different combinations, like run deeper and limit the engagement angle, going as large as possible.

For instance, with a 1/2" EM, on a 1" deep cut, rough it .99 deep with a 60 or 75 degree engagement angle whatever your HP rating will take or maybe a 1 1/2" deep cut with a 50 or 60 degree engagement angle, that way you get a lot more life out of your end mills. Experiment around a little until you find optimum results.

It's sort of like manually cutting along a straight piece of metal going down deep, but only taking a little with the side of the cutter each time, based on your machine's rigidity and horsepower rating.

TrueMill is really impressive with tough materials and weak machines, especially in 3D mode when coupled with step reduction milling, in materials like titanium...

[ToyMaker94566]

I have a suggestion... Don't upgrade your Surfcam!

I was using Velocity III and loving it... I was confident that the newest Surfcam must really be good now so I got back on maintenance. I am currently running Surfcam V5.1 and found out that TrueMill is no longer included with the standard Surfcam, it's now an $1800 dollar option!

I hate when features are removed after we helped them fix the bugs!

[Chrliev]

Toymaker, you are right. I'm still using V4. I see no reason to upgrade to V5. Surfware has made a marketing decision and it's probably the first marketing decision that I have seen them make that does not benefit their user base.

With the loss of TrueMill any benefits of going from V4 to V5 are negated, another $1800 for something that was free last year amounts to losing more than you are gaining.

Fortunately if you have upgraded to V5 you can use V4 and TrueMill, all that you need is an old V4 install set, they actually told me to do this, send them the money for an upgrade to V5 and then I can still run V4. I said WOW...! Maybe I'll just keep the money for V5 and then run V4. Probably didn't think anyone would be smart enough to think of that. Unfortunately you can't open a file in V4 that was created or modified in V5...

They never really told anyone about this V5 downgrade, even though Surfware is famous for their PR department and their Press Releases. Paid users have should have a right to know before they pay money to downgrade their software. Hopefully if enough people stick with V4 and don't upgrade they will reverse their hard line position.

Imagine that V6 comes out and no one pays for THEIR marketing decision to downgrade...

[moldcore]

We were on maintenance when V5 came out and it included TrueMill but from now on it will be extra if you drop the maintenance I understand. There is an option to save V5 files in the V4 format if needed. Since V5 was really no improvement, we dropped or maintenance but received V 5.1 anyway because it contained a lot of needed bug fixes. There are some added features in V5.1 that we cannot access, I guess it’s because we’re not on maintenance. This will be our last version unless they make some drastic changes in the future witch I doubt. While I wouldn’t say that V5 is a downgrade, I will say that it’s certainly no better than V4. However, we had a major crash using V5.1 so we’ve gone back to V4 because of that and some quirky selection problems that V5 had that still persists in V5.1. From what I was told V6 will not be the much needed major interface make over, only more bug fixes.