Tech Tips

There is a new Apply button feature available in Mastercam’s Mill toolpaths that allows you to preview cutting motion, resulting in streamlined toolpath creation. In the past, when programming options like multi-passes, you needed to take an educated guess at the number of passes required to cover the area we were machining. In Mastercam 2022, you were able to use the Preview Toolpath button to see the cutting motion before exiting the dialogue. Now, in [...]

What are the benefits of upgrading a 2D mill or router seat to 3D? The Mastercam products referred to as 2D and single surface 3D allow some limited 3D machining, however, they can be updated at any time. This upgrade is referred to as Multi-surface 3D and it adds significant capabilities beyond just the multiple-surface 3D machining capability including: Stock awareness that prevents wasted time in “air cuts” Multi-thread processing for efficient multi-tasking Seamless integration [...]

Mastercam 2023 now gives you choices for mapping colors identically or independently in the main interface and the Mastercam Simulator often referred to as Mastercam Verify. In previous versions of Mastercam, color mapping in the main interface was completely independent of the Simulator and was also tied to the simple 256-color palette of Windows. However, the Simulator uses the HTML color palette which, while it supports many more color definitions, uses a different naming convention [...]

There is a new feature in the Mastercam 2023 Multiaxis Deburr toolpath that allows you to more easily program your models. Typically, when using the deburr toolpath, you would need to modify your models to remove the modeled chamfers in order to program to a sharp corner. Now, with the latest Mastercam release, there is a new option available when using automatic edge detection called Include Unsharp Edges. Here’s how to use it. In the [...]

This blog post will cover a new Mastercam 2023 Tool Axis Control strategy for the multiaxis toolpaths called Tilt Relative to Reference Surface. In previous versions of Mastercam, you needed to utilize the Clean Core machining method to achieve this style of tool axis control. This meant creating a simplified surface under the part to drive the tool axis control and then offsetting the toolpath using a collision control strategy. This added a substantial amount [...]

In this article, we will introduce a significant upgrade in Mastercam 2023,  the  Slot Mill toolpath. In previous versions of Mastercam, Slot Mill was only capable of processing very limited shapes. When you selected the Slot Mill toolpath and the chain of the profile to be machined, the oblong chain geometry generated the path with no problems. However, if you tried any of the other similar shapes you would get a warning message that says [...]

Mastercam 2023 includes an exciting new upgrade of the OptiRough toolpath. Rest Material now supports enhanced stock awareness in the Z-axis. In previous versions, Rest Material would ignore some aspects of the defined stock, but now, the stock option makes OptiRough Rest milling far more stock aware. You will notice a new stock option under Steep/Shallow. This new option allows you to choose if you want to reference the material above or below the part [...]

There is a new model prep tool in Mastercam 2023 called Solid Position and it is used to assemble parts in a fixture. In previous versions of Mastercam, assembling fixtures was a tedious process that required using the Transform tools to specifically position each piece of the fixture without any awareness of the neighboring solids. Now, in Mastercam 2023, you can use the new Solid Position tool to simply drag the target solid until it [...]