Learning Hypermill

metalmadness said:

Hi,

I will be starting a job that will require me to learn Hypermill. I am moderately annoyed by this but also excited to broaden my skillset as well.

I have about 8 years of Mastercam and 4 years of Multiaxis experience under my belt. With such a solid base I expect I will be able to handle learning a new piece of CAM software without too much pain. I just want to make the process as painless as possible.

Has anybody got any idea if there are resources (free) online that might help in this endeavor? Mastercam is well known for their robust online presence with forums and useful content from their resellers. I expect that I will have the ability to work with an applications engineer as much as is needed initially, but I want to jump start the process.

How "hard" is Hypermill compared to some other CAM suites? As far as I know this will be standalone Hypermill and not the Solidworks add-in.

General tips and advice is welcome.

Click to expand...

empwoer said:

will the company pay for your training? just spend a day or 2 with their apps guys and you'll be good to go. their support is also very good, most times you get a call back within the hour and they can walk you through any issues you might be having.
boosted covered most of it. workflow is very similar, instead of planes, you have frames in hypermill, function is exactly same, just different name. you also have layers etc.

Click to expand...

metalmadness said:

Thanks. They should be paying for some training yea, how much I dunno but they know I am green on Hypermill.

Click to expand...

metalmadness said:

Thanks for the info. I have spoken with one of the guys there who went from Mcam to Hypermill and said it was just like rewiring his brain to figure out where stuff is/how stuff behaves.

Click to expand...

boosted said:

It's not so bad. Those two are about as close as any CAM package I've ever used. Buttons and toolpaths are different, but the workflow is really, really similar. Going from MCAM to ESPRIT is a lot harder. You just have to be willing to learn a new software, which it turns out a lot of programmers/machinists refuse to do. We had a couple holdouts at the last job that constantly pushed against learning hyperMILL, despite it's clear superiority in our environment...

Chaining yourself to MasterCAM is like resigning to mediocracy - almost none of the premium shops use it.

Click to expand...

BluishInventor said:

I don't have much MC experience, but I just went through the paces of evaluating new CAM packages to replace our current one(Camworks). Ultimately decided on Hypermill for a lot of reasons, mostly due to the odd prototyping work we due and the ability to make 5 axis and 3d toolpath work a breeze. Hypermill/hypercad is built for CAM programmers. Lots of useful tools to make your life easier.

There isn't much training out there other than their youtube channel. CAM by OPEN MIND - YouTube
It's unfortunate, but it's how it is for now.

The upside is, once you get the basics down, you're pretty much off and running. All the operation dialogues are the same, just changing a few parameter fields based on the toolpath type. Learning the different operation types(which are called jobs) and figuring out what works best for what is the thing that takes time as with most CAM software. But, overall, I'd say it's much easier than MC and most CAM packages for that matter. Very intuitive and things are right in your face.

One thing to keep in mind is that they approach things from a different perspective. Where most CAM packages based on Moduleworks have nearly identical parameters, hypermill handles them in different way. For example, instead of percentages, they use factors. So, instead of 100% and 50% you type in 1.0 or .5. And the way they use feeds and speeds is probably where you will see the most difference. All of that is derived from the Tool Database. You can modify it, but it's just different. The key with that is to have a really well built database. So, hopefully the folks before you have taken the time and put in the effort to develop a robust tool library. It pays dividends throughout other aspects of the software as well.

The CAD part of the software(sketching and modeling) is it's own beast and not like many others. This is one thing I need to practice more as I like to design on the fly and not have to jump back and forth with hypermill and solidworks. It's very capable, but different enough to get frustrated as a beginner. But, I feel if one knows it well, they could do pretty much everything they would need to and be pretty efficient too. I've been using solidworks for a decade and it's just hard to beat. But, I could see myself getting good with Hypercad, but I need to spend time on that alone for a bit because I don't model too much in the CAM environment. I have all our tooling modeled and the only thing I really ever need to draw up is form jaws. And if I need to design an elaborate fixture, Solidworks is where'd i'd go. So... i guess we'll see how it goes.

Overall, it's a fantastic piece of software. And multiaxis work is honestly easier than 2D work. Like 1/3 of the clicks. It still blows my mind how simple it is and how good the result is. And as others have said, if you get stuck or find a challenge, support is absolutely amazing.

We had a Applications Eng. come to train 3 of us for 4 days. We covered a TON of material and we finished early and jumped into more advanced techniques on the last day. Not sure if your new employer will send you or have someone come out, but honestly if you can get training from Open Mind, you will be off and running in no time.

One thing i've noticed too, is most hypermill users never look back and don't want to go back.

Either way, good luck on the new gig and reach out if you have any questions!

Click to expand...

empwoer said:

you're the first person i've ever seen put hypermill and intuitive in one sentence...

sketching is no different from mastercam, or any other non dimension driven cad/cam package. altering geometry size/location is still fucking archaic requiring you to translate instead of just having dimensions that you can double click on and change.
sure, you can do everything you need to, and the surfacing tools in hypermill are some of the best no doubt (just below NX IMO) but could be so much better, just look at NX or fusion for how simple and easy modifying sketches is.

i've used hypermill for 2 years, it deff has a lot of strenghts, but a lot of weakenesses as well. not crying about not using it anymore.

Click to expand...