[bheller]

Okay...I've spent several days of my life (regretfully) looking through all of the Chinese machine forum and most of the Mach forum and haven't found a solution. I'm sure that the answer is simple. I know this because I finally found the reason Mach 3 wasn't saving the machine coordinates was because the "persistent DRO" check box wasn't checked. Only took me two day to find that. The problem is that my "WONDERFUL" Donja 3040 engraver is supposedly 300mm by 400mm. Mach 3 seems to think it is 30mm by 40mm according to the DROs. I can't get the DROs to show correctly. The soft limits have to be set up as 30 x 40. If I set 300 by 400 then the the X and Y slam into the ends of the axis. I don't even want to try to explain what the Zed does. Anybody have some suggestions (heaven forbid an actual solution) on what I have done wrong to screw up the scaling?

[SG50]

If you think it's mach3 then uninstall it and delete the xml file manually and do a fresh install.
Don't forget to reboot immediately after successful install.

[tgdavies]

Have a look at section 5.4 here: http://www.micro-machine-shop.com/Ma...all_Config.pdf

In the motor tuning dialog, what is the value of 'steps per unit'? That is, how many times are you telling Mach 3 it must step the stepper motors to move 1mm?

If you move '1mm' via the DRO, how far do you actually move? The ratio between how far you move and how far you should have moved will tell you what factor to use to correct the steps per unit.

[bheller]

SG50...I uninstalled, reinstalled, configured and reconfigured and tried four different xml files. I finally slowed down and stopped flipping every toggle and pushing every button I could get my hands on, and read a little (almost every post that has to do with the Chinese machines). None of this solved my problem. Thanks for trying to help.

[bheller]

tgdavies - Thanks. I needed that. I kept saying that I should read through the manual and just never got around to it. After reading the section you pointed out I had an epiphany. The problem and the solution was starring me in the face every time I looked at the DROs. Thank you and SG50 for getting me to slow down and think. I set the machine up according to the manual that came with it. I think I'm fluent in Chinese now. The manual had the step setting for the motors wrong, by a factor of 10. Anyway, I won't bore you any more with my noob mistakes. Thanks to both of you.

[tgdavies]

Glad to help, we are all noobs at one point!