[dan3676]

I shut my machine off which is run with a smoothstepper after drilling some holes in a large workpiece that I still have things to cut in. When I shut my controllers and smoothstepper off the only way I have been able to get things back up to communicate is to restart mach 3. So basically I'm sitting right now with mach 3 not responding and I have my machine sitting still with the coordinates still up on mach 3 but everything is locked up because my smoothstepper was shut off. How can I return to Zero when I restart Mach 3? On another note for some reason mach 3 won't keep my setting such as spindle settings even after saving it. I'm baffled by that too. I'm using Vcarve software for cad/cam.


Thanks!

[Claude Boudreau]

Why cant you home your machine...unless you are manually zeroing ...in that case to find your coordinate again you can manually jog to a hole and write on the DRO
the coordinate of the hole written on the gcode ..dont forget to press enter....top of work should be z zero usually...
utube has great videos , this one on work offset might be usefull for you ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma7lMocQbv0

[awerby]

Assuming you can't just home your machine, write down the coordinates you're at now, and if Mach doesn't remember them when it restarts, restore them by hand, by typing them into the DRO boxes and pressing Enter. If they aren't accurate, though (if you lost steps before the freeze) then jog back to one of the hole locations called out in the G-code, sink your drill into the hole you previously drilled, and enter the values in the G-code.

[RCaffin]

You need to PLAN your program so the origin can be relocated if the power is lost.
Trouble is, I am not sure whether any of the CAM packages have this option.
Eh, you can always do a small cut at the origin along the X and Y axes to create a reference point. Or somewhere else convenient.

Cheers
Roger