Continuous Improvement and New Functionality Are the Name of the Game

This summer, Mastercam launched the latest update to its flagship software with Mastercam 2025. Updates include new functionality, upgraded visuals, features to increase machining performance and reduce production costs, and much more. From small enhancements to major software changes, keep reading to learn more about how Mastercam 2025 can enhance your shop’s productivity and efficiency.

Top Advancements Include New Features

The biggest addition to Mastercam 2025 is Mastercam Deburr. Chad Chmura, a sales engineer for Mastercam and experienced machinist, says having this available for everyone is a game changer. “Any time there is a human operator touching a part, the chance for scrap increases,” Chmura says. “The machine is going to run a Deburr toolpath the same every time, resulting in the exact break edge you programmed. It also allows you to reach places a human hand may not actually be able to reach with a deburr tool,” he continues.

Mastercam Deburr simplifies the deburring process through automatic edge detection and intuitive controls.

Deburr Increases Quality, Safety & Productivity

Mastercam Deburr puts a perfect break edge everywhere, every time, on any material, consistently. “The programmer just needs to select a few faces on the model and tell Mastercam Deburr what to cut and what to avoid. The deburr toolpath will do the rest.” Chmura says the key to it is speed and consistency. Adding a deburr toolpath may seem like an extra step, but ultimately the increase in quality, safety and productivity are worth the investment.

Toolpath Enhancements

The next big addition for Chmura is finishing passes for 2D Dynamic and Area Mill toolpaths, new this year. “We’ve always had the Contour toolpath, which is our simple finishing toolpath, that could be added to the end of a program,” he says. “Adding finish passes to our 2D roughing toolpaths essentially cuts the number of necessary operations in half on some parts. Instead of programming a roughing toolpath and then a finishing toolpath individually, I can now include both in one single Mastercam operation.

Users now have the ability to add finish passes to 2D dynamic mill and area mill toolpaths.

Various thread mill enhancements have been added in Mastercam 2025. A few of the top highlights include speed/feed override for lead in/out, new gradual lead in/out strategy and tool edge feed rate.

The company is also excited to introduce enhancements to the Thread Mill toolpath in Mastercam 2025. Chmura works closely with OEMs in Mastercam’s partnerships department. Mastercam’s strong partnerships with tooling providers was critical to this enhancement.

“In general, we program milling tools with a linear feed rate, measured at the tool’s center. When running the tool in a straight line, the cutting edge engages material at that same feed rate,” he continues. “But, when you’re inside a hole, a small hole especially, the cutting edge will engage material much faster than the programmed feed rate. As a result, you need to really slow down the programmed feed rate to avoid pushing a thread mill beyond its limit.” He says operators often use trial and error to find the speed that works. Mastercam 2025 now includes an option to define a feed rate at the cutting edge of a thread mill, eliminating operator guesswork. Beyond these feed rate enhancements, Mastercam 2025 also incorporates a new “gradual lead-in" motion – further prolonging the life of Mastercam-programmed thread mills.

Safety and Protective Features Enhanced

Mastercam 2025 features improvements to Multiaxis Safety Zone functionality. “Safety zone is extremely important when it comes to avoiding collisions,” he says. “In simplified terms, you generally can reach 5 sides of a cube on a multiaxis machine. Safety Zone helps us to define a safe path between cuts that happen on different sides of the cube. Our newest release gives the user more control over the tool during a Safety Zone move, with specific focus on smooth and predictable tilt motion.”

The new safety zone uses meshes for parametric shapes, where the previous version used a mesh for the wrap shape only. Parameters available include linear tolerance, blending distance and smoothing distance.

Another feature in this edition is mill-turn support for Y-Axis Turning. This feature automatically creates a set of planes users can use to create their toolpath with the proper tool orientation and spindle origin. It also locks the B-axis to the 90-degree position.

Additionally, the available approach and retract strategies have been enhanced to include Y-first strategies, along with the ability to designate tool assemblies as Y-axis compatible in the holder component page.

A-Axis Contour Turning in mill-turn is also available, complementing the B-axis contour toolpath that was introduced in Mastercam 2023. The new toolpath is similar to the B-axis contour toolpath, except it uses Y-axis tools, allowing users to rotate the tool while in cut to reach difficult to machine areas. B-Axis contour turning enhancements in this version allow the inclusion of splines in chained geometry as well as new tool angle controls to specify either leading or trailing angles for the inserts.

The new A-axis contour turning toolpath complements the B-axis contour toolpath introduced in 2023 and extends Mastercam’s support for rotary contour turning.

Now available is the ability for Mastercam Mill-Turn platform users to store and reuse common machine setups, including workholding, tool holding, and tool components with specific machine configurations to then be able to load them again to quickly use the same set up in the future.

The Analyze Deviation function analyzes the difference between entities and applies a color-coded heat map to show the deviations within the graphics window, allowing users to compare any combination of points, curves, surfaces, bodies, or faces of parts.

User Interface Improvements

Two of Chmura’s favorite new features may seem like simple upgrades but make his life much easier – graphical plane display and color-coded geometry selection with 2D and 3D toolpaths. “Color-coding geometry in the graphics view helps the user to identify which entities are being used to generate a toolpath.” Chmura says. “Mastercam Multiaxis toolpaths already make great use of this functionality. The programmer can immediately tell which bodies are being used as Drive Surfaces or Collision Control surfaces – a task that used to be very difficult. In Mastercam 2025, many of our 2D and 3D toolpaths now support this same behavior.”

“Graphical Plane Display is another enhancement that simplifies the programming experience.” Chmura continues, “Traditionally, when defining cut depths or retract heights, the user could only input a number into a text box. There was no way to tell if that number was correct until the toolpath was generated. Graphical Planes were added to drilling toolpaths in Mastercam 2024 to visualize these values before generating the toolpath. Beyond being a simple visual aid, the user can also interact with the planes on-screen to adjust the toolpath depth values. In Mastercam 2025, these Graphical Planes have been added to many of our 2D toolpaths.”

With dozens of enhancements to Mastercam 2025, only some of the features have been showcased in this article. Some are small and others are quite significant. Users will find their own favorite features and upgrades much like Chmura has identified here. Visit Mastercam at IMTS to learn more, download Mastercam’s ebook that highlights the Mastercam 2025 enhancements, or contact your local Mastercam Channel Partner to learn more.