Favorite CAM software

[xirforever]

For those of you that have access to CNC machinery, what CAM software do you prefer to use? Here at school we use Esprit, and its miserable. I'm looking into finding another program to demo or something because Esprit just makes me want to shoot myself every time i use it. On top of that when we insert the G code on our mill its always throwing some type of error that we have to pick through the code to sort out.

So, what do you like?

 

[nz jailbar]

I use code shark. Just manually punch in g code .Helps to have good drawings to work off though.

 

[Jake]

I have both Gibbs and Esprit here. Gibbs is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with and the software is horrible as far as being user friendly. I also use Esprit here and could not be happier with it. Sounds like you don't have the right post setup for your machine. I have several different types of CNC mills here and it took a little post tweaking to get it just right but they give you all the software to do it. Gibbs will charge you no less than 500.00 for a post tweak. Have you been to the Esprit school? I have never ran into anyone that does not like that software.

Jake

 

[xirforever]

what version of esprit do you have? I mainly don't like esprit because; it has a hard time recognizing loops, its origin offset button sucks (i have to copy the entire part and translate it by the thickness of the material), the pocketing can be fussy when you have islands that you dont want the mill to run through, and more. I mean it all works eventually, its not not a very intuitive program. I may think about tweaking with it a little so i don't get errors in the mill when i run the program. Honestly, maybe I'm just not experienced enough with the mill and esprit to get them to run together seamlessly because its very typical to have to go through the G code to get the program to run.

What brand of CNC machinery do you have?

We have a HAAS mill and lathe and i hear HAAS machines are very particular, have you heard this?

 

[Jake]

I have two VF Haas mills with 4 axis attachments. 1 Kitamura 4Xif MyCenter. I am in the middle of replacing a couple of lathes with a Mori and two Haas units with bar feeds. I am not sure what you mean by particular. The Fadals used to be the bread and butter of the machine shop world but Haas has replaced them. I love there machines for anything that is not hard. The Kitamura will go through hard material 3 times faster than a Haas can. If you setup Esprit properley it can be very intuitive. You need to setup your templates and go through all the options for each template. I have standard loads in each machine and that helps. Also I have template for 1/4-20 taps and so on. I just drag and drop the template into the program and pick the hole. The templates already have the proper center drill and drill in them. Nice and fast.

Jake

 

[rwdfreak]

I've used NXcam and Catia V5R18 for a while. NX is a lot more user friendly and is pretty much straight forward. It's better for 2.5D When you start having more axxis, Catia V5 works really well , but be ready to spend a lot (or do like everyone and run a cracked copy).

If you do G code manualy you can double check with vericut which is a simple G code reader with a 3D interface that shave material in real time like the CNC would do. That way you can see interference. The hardess part is loading your CNC parmeter, physical dimension and look and enter your controler data.

 

[Shuey]

I use SheetCAM on the Plasma machine and RhinoCAM on the Mill... Never really had any issues with either of them. I'm just using basic RhinoCAM at the moment that just has simple 3D pocketing and finishing, but given that it is a direct plug in to RhinoCAD... life is simple.

Cheers,

Shuey

 

[haulin79]

MasterCam on Haas 5 Axis and Brother Mill/Drill/Tap.
MasterCam plain works.