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CAM for Live Tool / Y-axis Lathe and 5-axis Milling

Zahnrad I bought a Tsugami M08SY form Morris Midwest, who are doing the turnkey. They are both subsidiaries of the same company (MM and REM Sales, the Tsugami importer). Morris has been fantastic so far - really responsive through a few curveballs.

We're dealing with Scott at Morris for the Okuma option. We're supposed to get together over there in about a week. We're also looking at a Tsugami option, as well.
 
I guessed that you weren't dealing with AD directly when you mentioned partmaker. I don't know what your vendor told you, but be aware that partmaker is now apparently deprecated - just in case that was influencing your decision. Also, that line about FC learning your preferences over time is bullshit, it has no such intelligence. It has good configurable defaults, but nothing that "learns". Be wary of salesman bullshit.

That said, and since you don't seem to be phased about going with AD, featurecam is actually very strong for turning and mill-turn, on of the best for that kind of work. Good multi turret / multi path and multi axis support, good toolpath control, part transfer etc., and the xbuild post editor is really excellent, so you won't find yourself hopelessly dependant on your vendor when you have post issues, if you take the time to learn the (very simple) scripting language it uses.

You know, the Mastercam guy said that about Partmaker but I got a live demonstration by a guy in PA on the development team...? I'll follow up on that; I don't want to buy into a dead or dying program. Perhaps "learning" is too strong of a word. I was shown that if you generated a toolpath and overrode some of what it came up with, the next time he tried it he didn't have to override anything, so I'm guessing you're just flipping default switches as you go, but it did seem to work. Either way, Partmaker is bundled with FeatureCAM (but not the other way around I guess?), and I've heard a few swiss turn guys using that who had good things to say. I'm intrigued by the post editor; I've done a limited amount of this but I have had to rely on someone who knows scripting.

At this point I'm waiting on NX for some followup, and I'll have to check back on these questions with the AD reseller. If someone knows a good Mastercam reseller in the SE Wisconsin area I should try I'm all ears. The guy I tried was fumbling through a demonstration because of a recent update (couldn't find buttons/features) and couldn't seem to come up with something that made Mastercam really great. Then he punted and said he didn't want to quote it...

Thanks to everyone for the help and feedback, and I really do have an open mind on this. That has to change in the next few days, though, or I'm going to be asked hard why I don't have a solution in place. If you told me that a fast decision was better than a thorough one right now, I may be inclined to agree.

I'll read back through the thread and see if there is anything I missed.

EDIT: to clarify, it was PM that I was shown the "learning" on, not FeatureCAM. I did not get a live demo yet of that.
 
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The future of partmaker was discussed recently in a thread on the official featurecam forum. That's where I read about it, and that's the extent of my knowledge about it. Partmaker is apparently no longer being developed directly and it's unique functionality is being brought into featurecam over time. Recommend you head over there and have a read.
 








 
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