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Question on if bug in ProE Manufacturing crashes your CNC machines what can you do about it? Rant..

snguyen
1-Newbie

Question on if bug in ProE Manufacturing crashes your CNC machines what can you do about it? Rant..

Good morning,
I am running into a situation where when I went to WF5 M220 and in
the couple months I have crashed my vertical CNC machine. First time milling
aluminum with a 2" inserted cutter running at a little over 200 ipm the tool
was at the bottom of a pocket and the code tells it to feed right into a
part. It totally destroyed my spindle on the mill. I had to replace the
spindle and all PTC can say that they will submit it as a SPR to R&D. that
happened in May of 2013 case number #C11370982. The next problem happened in
January of 2014 where it destroyed my mold core that I spent 32 hours of
machining case number #C11839437. The latest one is February 25, 2014 where
the tool went thru my part at 1" depth and snapped the pull stud seized up
the taper inside the spindle. The weird thing was on this last one I ran
through gouge and vericut with a 2" cutter before I release the program to
the floor and it was fine. While running the program we ran out of Y axis
travel so I swapped the tool to a 1" and shrink the window smaller to
compensate the new tool. I figure that I did not change nothing else just to
run gouge check and skip the Vericut because it takes almost 20 minutes to
recode the code for Vericut. I was in a rush and since gouge check said it
was fine I paid for it again case number #C11875717.

All of these showed no gouges when ran through gouge check but if you zoom
into it you can see the extra move that cause the crashes. The last incident
did show in the embedded ncl Vericut but was fine in gouge check.

My question is with all these crashes that my company ends up paying to fix
the damages that was cause by ProE and all I get is "We will send it to R&D
and get back to you on it". I feel that I am doing all there quality testing
for them and I use their software at my own risk. At the moment everybody in
the shop are scared to run a program since I cannot explain to them why the
other crashed and the only thing I can say is "a bug in ProE".

What can I do?

I figure like if I buy a car and it takes off on its own and crashes into a
building not once but three times so far and that I can prove that it is not
the user and it is the car. Should I be responsible for all the damages that
the car caused?

I am frustrated with ProE right now. I love using it but lately I feel like
they are not doing better with their quality. If it keeps up I know
management will tell me to look at other CAM packages, I don't want to
because our engineering department uses ProE to design and it will suck to
use a translator to convert ProE parts to another CAM system.

Son Nguyen
108 w. 2nd Street
Assaria, KS. 67416
(785) 667-7763 ext. 3477



This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.
7 REPLIES 7

Two things cross my mind:



. Buy VERICUT's VERIFICATION module and check G-Code in case you
don't have it. What've spent on crashes would cover this easily. And a lot
of benefits from VERICUT would come to the play.



. Never skip VERICUT. Never. No matter which CAM system you use.



I used to be a Pro/NC fanboi as well but my reputation was tested when the
system started to show itself slow and not adapted to modern machining
times. Between PTC, the folks I support and my career I picked the last
ones.



I was a tough decision but I'm glad I never had to look back.



Daniel




You HAVE to verify the G-code before it gets to your machine. Don't rely on checking NCL files that have not been post-processed. Also make sure the G-code simulation software, (Vericut, for example) has the machine-sim option (expensive) so that you can also check for situations such as out-of travel, etc...

I feel your pain.

My personal horror story relates to 'smart' retract issues and machining electrodes and hard milling dies. The 'old hands' at my workplace told me never to use it as it doesn't work. The reality was that 'smart' retract always expects coordinated movement, and doesn't understand 'rapid' dogleg motions.

The 'solution' was never set traversing moves to '0' (rapid) when using 'smart' retract.

As is usual for ALL software, you will find a clause somewhere in the EULA that tells you that PTC (or any other software maker) is not responsible for any unexpected results the software may make. That goes for any analysis results as well. I'm pretty sure when pressed, all NC code software vendors will give you the same answer.



Christopher F. Gosnell

FPD Company
124 Hidden Valley Road
McMurray, PA 15317

Hi,

never trust CAM software and never skip the simulation verification step.

Sometimes is the geometry of the part, that is causing such kind of
problems. You will face situations like this, not only with Pro/NC but
also with other CAM packages.

Vassilis Anagnostopoulos

SPIDER SA
Industrial Area - Rodotopi
45500 - Ioannina
Greece
SteveLucas
13-Aquamarine
(To:snguyen)

I have been bitten by the "not so smart retract" and have learned that "always retract" is your Friend when using the rough and finishing routines. The time and travel saved with the smart retract is not worth the cost of an expensive mold cavity or core with gouges created from abad smartretract.


It is still doing it in the latest version of Creo I found out the last time I forgot to change the smart retract to always. I really need to change my site files to say always retract if I can rather than relying on my fading memory.

Not to get into a rant, but this is one (of many) of my pet peeves with most things PTC. I would think (as an application programmer) that I would not let you set the traverse feed or retract feed to '0' (uncoordinated rapid movement) if you have 'smart' retract turned on, among other things.

We have not yet converted to CREO2 yet, but on our list of things to do is implement new start parts, site files, solid tools with cutting parameters, and my personal goal is to use Jlink to interrogate the manufacturing assemblies (if possible) for these type of gotchas and others. It should be a busy summer!

Christopher F. Gosnell

FPD Company
124 Hidden Valley Road
McMurray, PA 15317
SteveLucas
13-Aquamarine
(To:snguyen)

Chris,


Good luck with your Implementation of new startparts,solid tools, site files and such. I have all that and it works fairly well for me with the occasional glitch usually from the solid tools or my automated cam sheet(drawing) that gets sent to my operatorand it usually comes from the cutting parameters not coming in correctly (totally my fault). I then just adjust the parameter manually in the sequence then write it down and attempt to fix it when time allows. Keeps me busy most of the time.


By the time you are done implementing all that Creo 3.0 will be out then you chase new bugs around !!

On a similar topic, maybe unrelated, are you using the cutter definition data in CREO downstream to help program tool setters (Zoller, parlec, etc...) for inspection? That's our 'Holy Grail' along with parameter passing, for the use of solid tools.


Christopher F. Gosnell

FPD Company
124 Hidden Valley Road
McMurray, PA 15317
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