[mhackney]

Well, after quite a thorough evaluation of all of small shop CAM products for lathe and mill (3D plus indexed 4th) I jumped into BobCAD-CAM v27 with both feet! I am setting things up for my workflow and equipment and it is pretty straight forward. I already appreciate many of it's capabilities like preconfigured / editable strategies. This will save me a lot of time and broken tooling!

I do have a question on how to manage tools. As a small shop I have a few tools that do the lion's share of work. I see that BobCAM separated End Mill Roughing from Finishing tools. I typically use the same tool for both operations - say a 3/16" 4 flute HSS end mill. I have created the set of Roughing end mills that I use with manual numbering (so they match my tool table in Mach3). I would like to have the same set of tools available as my Finishing end mills. But, when I view the ENDMILL FINISH tools in the Tool Library I see a completely different set of tools. This probably makes sense for the big production shops but not the way I work. Is there an easy way to copy/transfer my roughing tools to the finishing section or do I have to create the set again manually? OR is there a different / alternative workflow to deal with this?

regards,
Michael

[LeWhite]

You really dont have to copy finishing tools to the roughing library. When you select a tool for the features CAM it will be installed to tool crib (tool changer) tou can use crib tools for any operation. What this strategy wont do is set your roughing tool's feeds and speeds to finishing feeds and speeds. The workaround is milling stock/ edit/modify material/customised feeds and speeds based on tool type and operation. Good luck!

[mhackney]

Got it, thanks LeWhite. That works for me. I can set up the tools as roughing tools and speeds/feeds and use these for finish operations and tweak the speeds/feeds for finishing.

[jrmach]

"This probably makes sense for the big production shops but not the way I work"

You working Wood ?

[mhackney]

No, not working in wood per se, look at my avatar. I make fly fishing reel kits and reels in aluminum, brass, nickel silver. Some do have wood accents. The parts are made in small batches. My fixtures typically hold 12 parts (which is the largest my mill will handle) so I do things in batches of 12.

I typically work with 1/4" and smaller end mills. Most of the work is done with 1/8" and 3/16" end mills. This is partly to save on materials cost since I pack the parts pretty close together. Brass is getting expensive!

regards,
Michael