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Learning 3D MasterCAM on my own

SigurdACVW

Aluminum
Joined
Aug 16, 2013
Location
IL
I work for a small mold shop. Recently, our CNC guy turned in his notice and left rather quickly. The shop moved one of our toolroom guys into the CNC position and he has been learning from the old CNC guy for about a week or so. The management also told me that I will be the "backup CNC guy", but mostly still do toolroom-type work (machining, burning, repair jobs, etc.)

I run a 2-axis CNC knee mill, surface grinder and sinker EDM. I use Solidworks and MasterCAM X5 to program holes and pockets from a drawing. I can get around those two programs fairly well. I took the 2D MasterCAM course in my apprenticeship.

As far as the surfacing, programming from solid, .igs, .stp, all that stuff goes, I am lost. I would like to teach myself these concepts. This is being spurred on by the fact that my current job has a simple pocket with drafted walls and a huge corner radius in the bottom, and there's nobody here to program it. The company is in a jam, and I do not know what our training budget is. Is there a good resource online where I can read/watch about bringing a solid model in, creating surfaces, chaining, etc.? We have MasterCAM X5, X8, and 2017.

Thanks for your time.
 
I'd start with going to eapprentice.net and paying the $25 a month subscription fee, then start clicking around and taking in as much info as you can. I see they have some video courses up for 3D programming for X8.

I know firsthand that they have competent people that put out high quality stuff.
 
First thing I'd look at is YouTube.
There are a TON of videos out there on Mastercam.
Even if it's not for X5 give them a watch because chances are you will learn something.
 
YouTube is great. Also Streamingteacher.com and caminstructor.com are online courses for mastercam. They are like 600-700$ a year I think. But they are pretty helpful. But I still go on youtube a lot if there's something I'm trying to figure out.
 








 
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