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Anybody know a good educational source for Esprit milling?

iloveTXBBQ

Plastic
Joined
Apr 29, 2015
Location
Austin
I will be joining a company shortly that uses the Esprit software. I only have experience with Mastercam. I did email Esprit about an educational copy, but its only been 48 hours and they havent gotten back to me yet. Wondering if anyone has a good source for learning.
 
I will be joining a company shortly that uses the Esprit software. I only have experience with Mastercam. I did email Esprit about an educational copy, but its only been 48 hours and they havent gotten back to me yet. Wondering if anyone has a good source for learning.

Esprit is in the middle of a buyout by Hexagon, they may be changing how they support and what they'll give out for free.

I know Hexagon gives out student versions of surfcam ... but not sure about all the other software they have in their catalog.
 
Good luck getting anything 'educational' from Esprit. They might get you a 30 day demo but unlikely if you are not a business. I hope this changes with Hexagon at the Helm, it really is amazing software that more should know about.
Learning content, check out camwizard...its not cheap though.
 
There used to be a company called CIM Integrators that did training DVD's, but it looks like they are no more.

CAM wizard has some similar looking training DVD's. Don't have any direct experience though.
 
CAM Wizard is basically all there is for training material AFAIK.

I don't think they offer educational or trial seats to individuals, but it would be extremely difficult software to self teach anyways. It's great software, and once it makes sense, the workflow is great. However, Esprit is not intuitive at all.
 
Esprit is not intuitive at all.

The only reason for this is that most are coming from some other CAM that is chained based. With Esprit being featured based it takes some time to think in a new way. If you learn Esprit from the get go, without having to un-learn chain based CAM, its as easy as any other system.
 
The only reason for this is that most are coming from some other CAM that is chained based. With Esprit being featured based it takes some time to think in a new way. If you learn Esprit from the get go, without having to un-learn chain based CAM, its as easy as any other system.

I beg to differ. I never found the manufacturing workflow to be that difficult. In fact, I love the feature based machining, and it just made sense from the start. The unintuitive part is the terrible interface, abysmal geometry creation, buggy simulation, and weird tribal knowledge that goes into setting things up. And again I say this as a fan of the software. I've tried a lot of solutions, and so far nothing handles multi-channel turning with anywhere near the power and flexibility of Esprit.

Have you tried TNG yet? That's how modern software should behave. The workflow is very similar, but way easier to train people to use. I wish they would have structured things better so that they could remove the legacy product instead of struggling to support both. When we were implementing TNG on our 5 axis machines, it couldn't handle programming the MillTurns. Then they had issues with the source code in TNG and had to rebuild the whole damn thing. In hindsight, the issues with TNG might be part of why they sold.
 
Good luck getting anything 'educational' from Esprit. They might get you a 30 day demo but unlikely if you are not a business. I hope this changes with Hexagon at the Helm, it really is amazing software that more should know about.
Learning content, check out camwizard...its not cheap though.

Hmmm thats unfortunate. Mastercam learned the hard way by making their software innaccesible. Now I believe they offer one year educational seats . I do have a business LLC for a shop I dissolved. Perhaps I'll just use that and act like an interested buyer.
 
Hmmm thats unfortunate. Mastercam learned the hard way by making their software innaccesible. Now I believe they offer one year educational seats . I do have a business LLC for a shop I dissolved. Perhaps I'll just use that and act like an interested buyer.

They told me they don't do eval software and will only do a demo where you can watch them. I would have liked to have tried it but I was and am unwilling to drop 20K on software I can't play with first. Now that they were bought out I'm glad I went a different route.
 
The lack of a true trial period is why I ultimately went with Siemens NX instead of ESPRIT. Is NX the absolute best CAM package? Probably not, but better the devil you know than the devil you don't, and all that... I told the DP sales engineer as much in the end, that their lack of a trial very possibly lost them a sale. He seemed genuinely appreciative of the feedback and seemed to imply that some changes on that front may be coming in the near future.
 
They told me they don't do eval software and will only do a demo where you can watch them. I would have liked to have tried it but I was and am unwilling to drop 20K on software I can't play with first. Now that they were bought out I'm glad I went a different route.

I know this is an old post, but I think that depends on the salesman in your area. Ours was willing to give us a 90 day trial license.
 
I am learning Esprit at my new employer after using Mcam for the last 15 yrs. Have some Powermill experience also. But mostly Mcam.

After two weeks I am having a tough time getting anything done in a timely fashion. Esprit seems cumbersome. The other programmer has used it for years, but admits he's kinda set in his old school ways. I do have the tutorial discs, but the cd's never respond when I ask why I can't do this or why something isn't working like I thought... I've been put "in production" already and i'm struggling to actually be productive.

Anyone out there that can give me some insight ?

Is there a dedicated ESPRIT forum where a newbie like myself can go and ask newbie questions ?? Mastercam users could go on eMastercam forum and get TONS of great info and help with learning the software.

TNG is going to be implemented soon I've heard. I'm curious what that interface will be like.
 
Is there a dedicated ESPRIT forum

Yes, on their website. You need to login to access.
Esprit is not cumbersome, you just don't know how to use it yet. Esprit is by far faster to program with than any other chained based CAM.
 
yeah, found it.
I went back and snooped around the website...

Yes, I don't know what I'm doing yet as stated.

How do I get simulation to work properly from OP1 top side to OP2 btm side ?? Plane setting wrong ?

I was told I need to copy solid, rotate it and continue from same orientation as OP1 ???
 
How do I get simulation to work properly from OP1 top side to OP2 btm side ?? Plane setting wrong ?
I was told I need to copy solid, rotate it and continue from same orientation as OP1 ???

No copy pasting needed. Just program like you would in Mastercam, plane for each setup on the model.
 
Esprit says "No Bueno" when I go to simulate..
I think its looking to do a "rotation"
 
I am learning Esprit at my new employer after using Mcam for the last 15 yrs. Have some Powermill experience also. But mostly Mcam.

After two weeks I am having a tough time getting anything done in a timely fashion. Esprit seems cumbersome. The other programmer has used it for years, but admits he's kinda set in his old school ways. I do have the tutorial discs, but the cd's never respond when I ask why I can't do this or why something isn't working like I thought... I've been put "in production" already and i'm struggling to actually be productive.

Anyone out there that can give me some insight ?

Is there a dedicated ESPRIT forum where a newbie like myself can go and ask newbie questions ?? Mastercam users could go on eMastercam forum and get TONS of great info and help with learning the software.

TNG is going to be implemented soon I've heard. I'm curious what that interface will be like.

Been using Esprit for nearly 4 years now and with no programming experience prior to that. I did teach myself mastercam for a year during trade school, so maybe that helped speed things up? What I did was I bought the basic milling tutorials off of camwizard and was able to program parts in less than a month. Cut the b/s get the tutorials and learn the program. Even though I only got to use Mcam for a year I can tell you Esprit is way more powerful than Mcam. I can program 2 - 5 axis machines now and I turn down offers from Shops that use Mcam. Aint nobody got time for that!!
 








 
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