CAD / CAM for Brother M140X1

Hi All,

I have been approached to help develop a product, for which there is a market, and also source a suitable Mill and Lathe, part of which is also looking for a CAD / CAM package which is suitable for a Brother M140X1 Machining Center(Dealer has 3 units arriving in 3 months), the lathe will mostly like be a QTP 50s or QTP 100S(Dealer has both machines in stock).

The machining is not complicated, relatively straight forward, but need to do operations on all 6 faces of the blocks, similiar to the attached drawing. The raw material dimensions will be 180mm x 80mm x 22mm.

Materials being machined will be Aluminum split between (Grade 6061-T6), Stainless Steel (Grade 410) and if the need arises 2 to 4 pieces of Titanium (Grade 5(Ti 6Al/4V).

So I would like to hear from Owners / Programmers / End Users , whom run this machine, regarding the Pros / Cons of the software they are using.

Brother here are recommending MasterCam, but what I have been reading here on the forum, seems there are problems, but as always that can be subjective as people always have their own preference.




Thanks ...


Kevin

I'm pretty sure those Brothers, at least the ones in the US are 3+2. Damn near any decent CAM program will be able to program that machine (with a good post). Yes, Mastercam should work just fine....

If this is the only family of parts going to be made on these machines it might make more sense to contract the programming out to someone, let them use whatever they want to do it and save a LOT of money not buying 3+2 axis CAM software.

just hand code it ,,, its really not that hard to learn and once you get the hang of it you can save a lot of time on programs over ones made by cam ...

D.D.Machine said:

just hand code it ,,, its really not that hard to learn and once you get the hang of it you can save a lot of time on programs over ones made by cam ...

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not sure if this guy is being sarcastic, but don't listen to that^^^

henne said:

If this is the only family of parts going to be made on these machines it might make more sense to contract the programming out to someone, let them use whatever they want to do it and save a LOT of money not buying 3+2 axis CAM software.

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Henne,

Thanks for the reply and I know where you are coming from, but where I am situated,(in the land of where its copy copy copy), you will never be 100% sure that you have the ONLY copy of the programming. Of this particular body there are 3 different designs with slight different functionality.

This part is the main body of the complete setup, but the one with the most machining. there as total of 9 other components that need to be machined to fit this body.

We use HSMWorks...but we use it for 2.5+2 and 3+2 only. If I ever have to do any tuning or 4ax, I'll purchase a post from Partmaker (which we already use for our turn-mills)

Just a update:

On advice some some members whom replied in this thread and via PM I decided to ask the following companies for a demo of their CAD / CAM software which was deemed suitable for the M140X1:

1 - Mastercam - never bothered to reply to any emails.

2 - Esprit - replied,(took 4 days to reply) but via a vendor in Australia - vendor in Australia No Website, so no a good fuzzy feeling, was contacted via their Indonesian Representative, whom couldnt even write an email properly again not a warm fuzzy feeling.

3 - HyperMill (Open Mind Technologies)- replied from their Singapore Office within 24 hours. First contacted by the Manager then taken over by Sales Engineer, organised an online Demo, via Teamviewer. They provided the demo on the part I posted, I give some of the basic dimensions, on the shape, holes and slots.

Drew the part from scratch in 3D, which took about 20min, switched to the CAM, created a new Job. Then they selected the whole part, then run a command which analysed the 3D model, which automatically recognised all the features in the model holes, slots, pockets etc, which then populated the viewer pane.

From there it was a matter of entering in all the data for each feature, from there could run a tool simulation for each feature. Seen as they didnt have the Brother M140X1 Solid Model already in the software, they showed a simulation of machining the part on a DMU 65 FD monoBLOCK. So to me was quite impressive.

Later this month Open Mind have been invited to attend live demo of the software running on DMU 65 FD monoBLOCK, which they are running incojunction with DMG Mori for their DMU 65 Customers. DMG Mori have apparently sold 5 of these units into Indonesia since December 2015.

So is there any other people using HyperMill, if so what are your experiences with the software and technical support.


Kevin.

MKD
I was not being sarcastic at all ,,, from the top of the post it sounds like they are setting up to run "ONE" product ,, I have more than 32 years in cnc shops and 25+ years has been self employed, I have GIBBS, boobcad (junk), and do use EZcam some for fixture work but for all my products I "HAND CODE" in that I can write the code just how I want it and easily edit it to take seconds out of the run time .. my take is why spend 10K or more on a cam system and all the time to learn it only to find your still only relying on what it puts out to make you $$ .. call me old school but I learned how to hand write code and to me its one of the best things I have done for the bottom line of my shop. I enjoy knowing how to write, read and quickly edit code to make it do what I want and not what some box with a key board wants it to do.
cam is great for one off or short run jobs were you need to program them fast and get them out the door. but for production work were every second counts knowing how to edit code by hand is a big help in my book.... and I think it would be safe to say that most guys that can use cam and also know how to hand write code can see the added value

D.D.Machine said:

MKD
I was not being sarcastic at all ,,, from the top of the post it sounds like they are setting up to run "ONE" product ,, I have more than 32 years in cnc shops and 25+ years has been self employed, I have GIBBS, boobcad (junk), and do use EZcam some for fixture work but for all my products I "HAND CODE" in that I can write the code just how I want it and easily edit it to take seconds out of the run time .. my take is why spend 10K or more on a cam system and all the time to learn it only to find your still only relying on what it puts out to make you $$ .. call me old school but I learned how to hand write code and to me its one of the best things I have done for the bottom line of my shop. I enjoy knowing how to write, read and quickly edit code to make it do what I want and not what some box with a key board wants it to do.
cam is great for one off or short run jobs were you need to program them fast and get them out the door. but for production work were every second counts knowing how to edit code by hand is a big help in my book.... and I think it would be safe to say that most guys that can use cam and also know how to hand write code can see the added value

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This is all well and good, but it's highly dependent on the type of parts you're running. If you're doing 3D work for example, hand editing isn't efficient.
But if you're doing simple contours, or drilling simple holes, then yes, you can maximize efficiency with some hand editing to shave off a few seconds here and there.
As for the part the OP is asking about, by the time you got done hand coding that, I'd have been making chips for a while from my Mastercam program.

I 100% agree that mastercam can spit out a code and get parts running faster than hand coding ,,, but if you read the post you will see the guy is looking at (ONE) product and if you think its cheaper and simpler to spend 15K on mastercam then spend weeks or months learning it to make one simple part ( look at his drawing ) than to spend a few evening reading up on code for "FREE"

hand coding 2 1/2D parts is simple to learn and best of all free, I still use most of the books I picked up in 1983 and there is no maintenance fees or upgrades,

DD
glad you have a method that works for you.
with all due respect, the title of the thread was cad/cam....

most readers would find it odd for you to pay for several cam systems and then profess finger cam.
you are being sarcastic or just trolling, IMO.

To the OP:
A super great programmer i know from another company uses Hypermill for some 5 axis vane type work. He only uses it for sophisticated roughing which is pretty much a window select part, and crunch numbers affair. Their presales support is prolly best in the industry.
I wouldn't be too hung up on having issues contacting mastercam. you can always get in contact with the main US office. Anyways the userbase and online support you will find out in cyberspace is second to none....

Fusion 360 has pretty great support for 3+2 stuff, it's ultra affordable (particularly for start-ups) and probably the easiest CAM for beginners. The Brother post processor is also fairly bullet proof, so this seems like a good fit.

rlockwood said:

Fusion 360 has pretty great support for 3+2 stuff, it's ultra affordable (particularly for start-ups) and probably the easiest CAM for beginners. The Brother post processor is also fairly bullet proof, so this seems like a good fit.

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Hi - that's got me confused ref the Brother Post Processor for Fusion 360 - For my Brother I use a modified Fanuc one as I've never seen a specific Brother one - and I just updated Fusion 360 and looked at the post processors and still couldn't find a Brother one - where do I find it??

Many thanks - Chris.

Email the Autodesk posts team or look on the new post processor webpage. Only a super small percentage of their posts are actually included with the download..

rlockwood said:

Email the Autodesk posts team or look on the new post processor webpage. Only a super small percentage of their posts are actually included with the download..

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Ah thanks - didn't realise that.
Just found the Brother post - weird though as flicking through it, it appears it'll output the planes as G17,G18 and G19 rather than G102, G202 etc - maybe Brother started using this more normal convention after the A00 control (which I have)....

Anyway, apologies for the thread drift.

3Dmech said:

Ah thanks - didn't realise that.
Just found the Brother post - weird though as flicking through it, it appears it'll output the planes as G17,G18 and G19 rather than G102, G202 etc - maybe Brother started using this more normal convention after the A00 control (which I have)....

Anyway, apologies for the thread drift.

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Thanks for the drift. It solved my problem.