mrainey
Stainless
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2004
- Location
- Spartanburg, South Carolina
What I'm going to advertise isn't machining services. I write and sell software to help people who either make their living from machining or have a serious machining hobby.
I retired after close to thirty years as a CNC Programmer/Manufacturing Engineer. During that time I worked in a lot of shops and learned a good bit about machining, with an emphasis on CNC lathes and machining centers. I also spent one hell of a lot of time looking stuff up or working my pocket calculator to death. The software I've written is designed to help you avoid a lot of that.
ME Consultant Professional (MEPro) is a program written to help you with planning, estimating, and programming for CNC machining centers and lathes. It would also be very helpful for making calculations involving manual lathes and mills. There are a number of other useful tools for everyone involved eith machining, things like detailed thread data, a surface finish calculator, a drill and countersink depth calculator, a material weight and cost calculator, center drill and socket head cap screw dimensions, a huge drill chart, and ahardness conversion chart. These are things that machining people somehow find themselves looking up or calculating over and over again.
First, MEPro's Machining Calculator outputs suggested feeds and speeds for the tool and workpiece material you've selected, along with power requirements and machining times. How much information you have to enter depends on how much you want back, but the program is designed to require as little as possible.
It comes with machining data for twenty common materials - you can easily modify the data or add more materials. I spent many days rounding that data up from industry reference books, trade journals, and tool manufacturers. After averaging the results and throwing out the extremes, I came up with values that work very well in the vast majority of cases. We all know that nothing gives optimal results the first time, every time, but MEPro comes decently close.
If you're doing an estimate or machining plan, a mouse click adds the currently defined tool to a job plan that takes shape in front of your eyes. It displays all your tooling and machining data, plus time requirements and a detailed cost analysis. Change the material, machine, or any of a dozen other variables, and the job plan instantly recalculates. Edit the job to add some passes or holes, change the number of flutes on a tool, whatever - everything updates in a flash.
When you've defined and added all your tools, you can view or print a detailed summary of the entire job and save the job to your hard drive for reuse.
The program handles inch or metric data with equal ease.
MEPro is a serious program, nothing like the calculators you often find online that are supposed to blow your mind by converting surface feet (SFM) to RPM, or inches to millimeters. It would be a big money saver for almost anyone who makes chips for a living.
MEPro features:
Advanced, Interactive Machining Calculator
Integrated Job Planner and Estimator
Material Weight, Volume, And Cost Calculator
Massive Screw Thread Database
Drill And Countersink Depth Calculator
Surface Finish Calculator
Comprehensive Drill Cross Reference
Center Drill Dimensions
Socket Head Cap Screw Dimensions
Hardness and Tensile Strength Comparisons
Machining Data Editor
Machine Specifications Editor
This program sells for $100. It will pay for itself in no time at all.
If you're interested in reading more:
My website, where you'll find lots of MEPro screenshots and info. There are also two other inexpensive, very useful programs (ME Threads and ME Weights).
http://mrainey.freeservers.com
Website of the well-known CNC training company, CNC Concepts (CNCCI)
Mike Lynch, the owner of CNCCI and long-time columnist in Modern Machine Shop, thinks enough of MEPro to be promoting it on his site.
http://www.cncci.com
A five-page pdf color brochure which describes MEPro's features. It also has quite a few comments from current users.
http://mrainey.freeservers.com/Downloads/MEProBrochure.pdf
A function-limited demo version of MEPro that gives you a complete picture of how the program works. The User Guide has detailed explanations of all the features.
http://mrainey.freeservers.com/Downloads/MEProDemo.zip
A detailed PowerPoint tutorial.
http://mrainey.freeservers.com/Downloads/MEProTutorial.ppt
I retired after close to thirty years as a CNC Programmer/Manufacturing Engineer. During that time I worked in a lot of shops and learned a good bit about machining, with an emphasis on CNC lathes and machining centers. I also spent one hell of a lot of time looking stuff up or working my pocket calculator to death. The software I've written is designed to help you avoid a lot of that.
ME Consultant Professional (MEPro) is a program written to help you with planning, estimating, and programming for CNC machining centers and lathes. It would also be very helpful for making calculations involving manual lathes and mills. There are a number of other useful tools for everyone involved eith machining, things like detailed thread data, a surface finish calculator, a drill and countersink depth calculator, a material weight and cost calculator, center drill and socket head cap screw dimensions, a huge drill chart, and ahardness conversion chart. These are things that machining people somehow find themselves looking up or calculating over and over again.
First, MEPro's Machining Calculator outputs suggested feeds and speeds for the tool and workpiece material you've selected, along with power requirements and machining times. How much information you have to enter depends on how much you want back, but the program is designed to require as little as possible.
It comes with machining data for twenty common materials - you can easily modify the data or add more materials. I spent many days rounding that data up from industry reference books, trade journals, and tool manufacturers. After averaging the results and throwing out the extremes, I came up with values that work very well in the vast majority of cases. We all know that nothing gives optimal results the first time, every time, but MEPro comes decently close.
If you're doing an estimate or machining plan, a mouse click adds the currently defined tool to a job plan that takes shape in front of your eyes. It displays all your tooling and machining data, plus time requirements and a detailed cost analysis. Change the material, machine, or any of a dozen other variables, and the job plan instantly recalculates. Edit the job to add some passes or holes, change the number of flutes on a tool, whatever - everything updates in a flash.
When you've defined and added all your tools, you can view or print a detailed summary of the entire job and save the job to your hard drive for reuse.
The program handles inch or metric data with equal ease.
MEPro is a serious program, nothing like the calculators you often find online that are supposed to blow your mind by converting surface feet (SFM) to RPM, or inches to millimeters. It would be a big money saver for almost anyone who makes chips for a living.
MEPro features:
Advanced, Interactive Machining Calculator
Integrated Job Planner and Estimator
Material Weight, Volume, And Cost Calculator
Massive Screw Thread Database
Drill And Countersink Depth Calculator
Surface Finish Calculator
Comprehensive Drill Cross Reference
Center Drill Dimensions
Socket Head Cap Screw Dimensions
Hardness and Tensile Strength Comparisons
Machining Data Editor
Machine Specifications Editor
This program sells for $100. It will pay for itself in no time at all.
If you're interested in reading more:
My website, where you'll find lots of MEPro screenshots and info. There are also two other inexpensive, very useful programs (ME Threads and ME Weights).
http://mrainey.freeservers.com
Website of the well-known CNC training company, CNC Concepts (CNCCI)
Mike Lynch, the owner of CNCCI and long-time columnist in Modern Machine Shop, thinks enough of MEPro to be promoting it on his site.
http://www.cncci.com
A five-page pdf color brochure which describes MEPro's features. It also has quite a few comments from current users.
http://mrainey.freeservers.com/Downloads/MEProBrochure.pdf
A function-limited demo version of MEPro that gives you a complete picture of how the program works. The User Guide has detailed explanations of all the features.
http://mrainey.freeservers.com/Downloads/MEProDemo.zip
A detailed PowerPoint tutorial.
http://mrainey.freeservers.com/Downloads/MEProTutorial.ppt
