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Gibbs vs. Esprit for wire...

Jay Cee

Hot Rolled
Joined
Apr 24, 2006
Location
North East Ohio
Hello all,
I am curently running Esprit W software and am looking to either upgrade to the latest Esprit, switch over to Gibbs, or just stay right where I'm at. My last experience with Gibbs was that it was incredible for lathes, good for mills, but well behind in the WEDM race against Esprit. In fact, I don't think 4axis wire work was even an option with Gibbs. Anyone running the new Gibbs for wire? Any comparisons to Esprit??
 
I use Gibbs for production mill.

From the little I have seen of Gibbs WEDM I'm not impressed at all... I'd rather use what I used 7 years ago with Esprit X than use Gibbs WEDM.

Jon Banquer
Phoenix, Arizona
 
After Smart Cam went away we gave Gibbs Wire a try, it was useless on anything 4axis. We went to Esprit and love it for the wires. We still use Gibbs on the mills and lathes, paid for it might as well use it :( .

Bill
 
Thanks for you input guys. Do you know what version you had? I am looking at the new 5 axis version. Came out this year, or maybe late last year.
 
we have had a GIBBS for mills and lathes for at least 8 years....about a year and a half ago we bought a wire machine and picked up the GIBBS module.....I havent run any other wire cam product, but Id say that GIBBS wire module cant be compared to its mill modules...

I have nothing but issues with the wire module....I fight with it all the time.....we were loking into getting another software to run the wire edm machine...because GIBBS wire sucks so bad.

I am sure if I used it every day, Id get better.

I love the GIBBS we use for our lathes and mills.. and we recently upgraded to solid import, so we can manipulate Solid works files and just pull machinign operations off the solid part.....and as hard as that is to learn, we make progress......but that wire module...arggg

almost useless....I guess a messed up post doesnt help much either....the instructions are awful on the wire as well.... and then anyone I call cant help much.. they all say..."i am not an expert in the wire"

I am doing parts with the wire for sure....and its better than NOTHING...I forget how much we paid.....it was a better deal than paying $8,000 for a seat of esprit... and then trying to leanr it......but if you want to really feed that wire machine, you will want to look well beyond GIBBS

good luck

bob
 
We started with Esprit 2003 and bought into the service package, so we get the new versions as they come out. 2006 had some issues and they were taken care of pretty fast with updates. The tech people are good, easy to talk to when you need help.

Bill
 
Esprit is the ONLY WAY TO GO !!! Have been using it for years and they can't be touched, currently running 2006 and am looking forward to 2007,should be out soon. Make sure to buy the service package, its worth the $1000 /yr. :D

Marty
 
I also use Peps almost exclusively for programming WEDM. I have these other packages as well, but I find Peps is the most powerful and flexible programming tool in my collection.

I'm with TMD on this one, Esprit isn't the only way to go. Maybe it's the only way you KNOW...
 
I had gibbs wire early on.... bought espirit soon after and I think that was before Peps was really around. My wire edm is a 1986 Mits DWC 110, no issues running old software for programming with it. Most of it is the posts. Espirit has great posts for Mitsubishi's.....whatever you buy get a demo, cut a real part and see how much f'ing around you have to do with offsets, etc.
 
Sorry to hijack the thread but I have a Fanuc Wire EDM and use Fanuc software to program it and am very satisfied. Is any one using something else to program their Fanuc and do you like it better than the Fanuc software?

Thanks
Jim
 
Bob,

"I have nothing but issues with the wire module....I fight with it all the time.....we were loking into getting another software to run the wire edm machine...because GIBBS wire sucks so bad."

I don't think Gibbs even wrote their WEDM module. If I remember right under Help / About it shows who wrote the Gibbs WEDM module... something like Technical Solutions comes to mind. Its been awhile.

"I am sure if I used it every day, Id get better."

Doubt it. Sort of like I doubt if the best driver of my generation came back to life (Ayrton Senna) and he showed up at an F1 race in a Ford Taurus that he would be competitive.


By the way. I agree that Gibbs documentation for Solid Surface sucks. So does modeling in Solid Surfacer.

Jon Banquer
Phoenix, Arizona
 
OK, the general consensus seems to be that a couple of you guys desperately need to get away from using Gibbs. So, now you're left with trying to sort out which package will work best for you.

Obviously, there are some strong partnerships betweeen CAM providers and machine OEMs; this can be both good and bad, and will affect the level of support that you'll get on the CAM side.

//One case comes to mind in which [let's call them brand "E"] was going to charge a customer BIG $$ to further develop a brand-specific post that should have been there already. The customer switched to [let's call them brand "P"] as a result, and hasn't looked back since.
point: The difference usually isn't in the capability of the software, but how well the software provider keeps up with the machine tool builder's current technology, and how willing they are to gather this information and incorporate it into their package on a regular basis. In this case, it appears that brand "E" was too busy with other partnerships to give this customer the support he'd been paying for.//

I recommend talking to your local applications engineer who supports your machine. He'll be able to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the various packages and how these relate to YOUR machine and YOUR situation. Ask him how complete the various packages are in working with your machine's capabilities. (For example: Brand "E" might be 80% complete for your machine, where brand "P" might be 100%... or the opposite might be true.)

Just my $0.02, for what it's worth...
 
I would have to say go with Esprit. I used it for years and loved it. I changed jobs and now I use Mastercam. Mastercam's wire doesn't come close to Esprit. And I think most Wire EDM companies recommend Esprit.
 








 
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