r/mastercam

Hello!

I've recently returned to Mastercam, using the home learner edition at the moment-- I've noticed that on my current setup-- I get strange jittery framerates when verifying toolpaths in Verify.

I've never experienced this before and I'm using the same PC as I was when I was previously using it about 7 months ago.

The entire 3d environment is silky smooth, no lag whatsoever-- but when watching toolpath motion in verify it's like visible framerate style lag you would get in a video game if you had a potato for a PC. It's smooth for a few seconds, then goes jittery, smooth again, jittery.

I'm running on my laptop which is:

Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX
NVIDIA RTX 5090 24gb
96gb RAM
Samsung 9100 and 990 PRO 4tb HDs

I monitor task manager on my 2nd monitor and my CPU usage stays very low, GPU usage stays low.. everything is fine. Not sure why it appears to be "lagging"

I have no issues using SolidWorks, Inventor, etc.. and generally I have no issues using Mastercam either. It's just a strange, mildly annoying framerate lag.

Appreciate any advice or troubleshooting tips.

Hello fellow CNC folks. I've got a question for anyone that is willing to read and contribute. I've been programming for about 10 years now in Mastercam, and I've come across something that has me wishing for more options. That's where you guys come in - I may be missing something that is completely obvious. Pictured are 3 different toolpath options I have for a guitar neck. For context, I'm using a 1.5" ball endmill on a 3 head FAGOR router. I have seen people run guitar necks with parallel passes perpendicular to the neck, but that is not an option in this case. The goal is an efficient toolpath with minimal lifting, and a surface finish that requires light sanding. This is a production environment, so the lower the run time the better. Let me know what y'all think. Additional context in each photo

Edit: I forgot to mention that the first two phots are Raster paths.

This is two toolpaths - one for each half of the neck angled at 0.875 degrees to follow the taper of the sides. This gives the ideal surface finish but includes a lot of lifting in the center of the neck. Ideally there would be a toolpath that could achieve this result by selecting the full neck, adjusting the outside angle on both sides and stitch together the center without lifting. The last photo achieves this with a scallop path, but additional context there on why that path is not an option. The old school guys here would program half the neck, save the path as wireframe, mirror it and stitch the center together by hand. Ideally, I don't need to do that...

This is one toolpath with the whole neck selected running parallel to the center line of the neck. Since there is a taper on the sides, all of the lifting moves to the edges. This looks great toward the center of the neck but leaves less than desirable results on the sides that would require heavier sanding.

This scallop path is my ideal choice. One entry, no lifts and follows the taper on both sides. Unfortunately, the machine this is running on is a FAGOR router and is unable to achieve an ideal surface finish with this path. As the tool runs down the neck on one side and up the neck on the other, it leaves a hump right in the center where the two halves meet. There is about 0.002 if backlash in all axes on this machine that I have to navigate around, so this ideal scenario is not an option.