Enabling TCPC in Mastercam

All things CAM and G-Code
#1

Hello! Long time CAD user getting into CAM. I have a V2-10 that I recently upgraded to kinetic control. I’ve got a year license of Mastercam available, so I’m using that as my CAM program. I can model toolpaths and post code that behaves as expected, but only with center-of-rotation, and I’d like to use TCPC.

In some of the programming tutorials from Penta, there is a check-box selection in Fusion 360 to enable TCPC control. Is there something similar in Mastercam? If there isn’t, how should I edit the post processor?

I found this page: https://pentamachine.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KCUR/pages/1712553994/TCPC, but I’m not sure how to implement these changes in Mastercam. I’m happy to read documentation if someone can point me to the right place.

For reference, I’m using this post: Log in, which was released after Kinetic Control, so I assumed there would be TCPC options available.

#2

Hi @elliotmlehman
Maybe reach out to your Mastercam distributor, maybe they have the information you want. I think most people here use F360.
Cheers
TP

#3

Penta uses Mastercam for the new Solo mill so they probably know how to activate TCPC in that program.

#4

Hey @elliotmlehman!

While have been running some Mastercam generated programs on the Solo, we have actually only done so by working with an applications engineer at Mastercam. So, we have actually not done any Mastercam programming ourselves and we did not write the post processor for Mastercam.

TP is on the right track with his comment. I would suggest reaching out to your Mastercam distributor with that question. They should be able to answer it or get you to a person that can. If you cannot get an answer through those means, let us know at service@pentamachine.com and we will see if there is anything we can do.

Best,
Q

#5

Thanks for the replies everyone. I’ll reach out to mastercam and hopefully update here.

#6

Hello @elliotmlehman

I can answer your questions for you here if you haven’t found out from your Mastercam distributor yet. There are two things required for Mastercam to do TCPC programming as it is quite different from 3+2 programming. Mastercam uses a plugin for true 5 axis (TCPC) programming that is an additional option. Along with the 5 axis option, you will need a post capable of creating the program from the vector output that the 5 axis plugin creates.

If you have any other questions please let me know.

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