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Tell me about Hypermill and lathes

charlie gary

Stainless
Joined
Oct 4, 2009
Location
near Seattle, Washington, USA
I'm exploring different CAM packages, and I'm curious to hear about anybody's relevant experience with Hypermill and turning. Best stuff ever, or you wish you never had to try to make parts on a lathe with it? Please enlighten me.
 
I'm exploring different CAM packages, and I'm curious to hear about anybody's relevant experience with Hypermill and turning. Best stuff ever, or you wish you never had to try to make parts on a lathe with it? Please enlighten me.

Our other shop is using it to do some programming on a b-axis mill turn; It sounds like they're generally happy with it, but still are doing quite a bit of the trickier stuff in Esprit (part pulls/transfers, etc.) - I think it's a relatively bad example, though, as the machine is really closer to a 5x milling center, and parts wind up with way more milling than turning, so of course a good 5-axis milling package will be successful.
 
Our other shop is using it to do some programming on a b-axis mill turn; It sounds like they're generally happy with it, but still are doing quite a bit of the trickier stuff in Esprit (part pulls/transfers, etc.) - I think it's a relatively bad example, though, as the machine is really closer to a 5x milling center, and parts wind up with way more milling than turning, so of course a good 5-axis milling package will be successful.

Thanks for the response. I've been looking for reasons to look beyond Esprit, because it keeps coming up as the answer. This response helps.
 
Thanks for the response. I've been looking for reasons to look beyond Esprit, because it keeps coming up as the answer. This response helps.

There's a reason most people recommend Espirit for lathes.
And there's also a reason that people will tell you to stay far away from Mastercam Lathe, I'm one of those people. :D
 
Judging from the lack of response from Hypermill after I went to their web site and asked questions last week, I'm thinking they are not a viable option at this point.


Funny update- about five minutes after I posted this, I got an email from someone at Hypermill. Maybe there's hope after all.
 
Not sure if this info is of any use but, I have been a HyperMill mill seat users for 8 years and won't look at anything else, and I have a free choice of what I use, I also have a seat of lathe but haven't used it much. From what I have used it for, its been pretty good. Although it was just standard 2 axis turning. I know of a customer of ours that is pretty happy with and they use live tooling.
 
Not sure if this info is of any use but, I have been a HyperMill mill seat users for 8 years and won't look at anything else, and I have a free choice of what I use, I also have a seat of lathe but haven't used it much. From what I have used it for, its been pretty good. Although it was just standard 2 axis turning. I know of a customer of ours that is pretty happy with and they use live tooling.

Thanks for the input. I'm sure the Hypermill sales guy will tell me it's great, but that's his job. Your input carries a lot more weight.
 
Thanks for the input. I'm sure the Hypermill sales guy will tell me it's great, but that's his job. Your input carries a lot more weight.

Buying a new CAM system is a total mine field, and I don't envy you. As you say they all harp on about how good their package is. Do a demo that they've done 1000's of times and make it look vert slick.

If you were asking about 3D / 5x milling I would say you shouldn't look any further than HyperMill, but haven't used the lathe side too much so I can't really sing its praises like I can with the milling side.
 
Which Surfcam? new (EdgeCam engine) or Traditional, gotta clarify now since there are 2 different ones now Charlie

Traditional. I monkeyed with the re-branded Edgecam lathe for a few minutes, found an Edgecam lathe video on the Edgecam web site that showed two different cutting tools on the same tool holder at the same time during the verify video before it showed a boring bar rapiding through the part on its way to cut a feature inside the hole and decided not to spend any more time with the new and different stuff.

If I spent as much time learning Traditional lathe as I did learning how to program a mill or wire EDM I would probably be more comfortable with it, but it's definitely not a situation of "what you see is what you get" since tool room lathes have the cutting tools on the operator side of things.
 
Our shop uses Esprit for turning and Hypermill for milling. We would love to have one CAM system, but it just won't happen any time soon. Hypermill is really weak on turning; especially compared to Esprit.
 








 
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