[dneisler]

Anyone consider upgrading this POS's?
I can re-home and have seen as much as .100 difference. This makes life hard sometimes!

[MichaelHenry]

I was surprised to see how variable the home positions were on my lathe too, though mine were somewhat better than yours at 16 thou on X and 41 thou in Z. By comparison, the home positions on my 1100 mill repeat to within 5 tenths on X, 23 tenths on Y and 12 tenths on Z.

I ordered some cheap Ebay proximity switches but haven't had a chance to check them out yet. There were a couple of recent threads, maybe in the PathPilot of mill sections where this was discussed in a lot more depth and at least one person claimed to have developed a good solution.

On edit - see this thread and the other one referenced therein:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/tormac...6-tormach.html

Mike

[dneisler]

Thanks, I may have exaggerated a bit, but it is enough I can do anything until I re-zero.

[MichaelHenry]

Agreed - for me having to re-zero tools on the lathe is a lot more effort/time than re-establishing zero on the mill and it is worth the effort to find a better solution.

[sanddrag]

You do realize that you only need to re-zero one tool. The rest of the offsets are just relative. So, it isn't a whole ton of work. I usually just keep a small piece of scrap to turn a little bit of diameter on and measure with a caliper or micrometer, enter it, touch the face, and voila; no more than two minutes of work. But, I agree, it would be nice to have more repeatable switches, to not have to zero every time you e-stop or power off/on.

[dneisler]

Yes I do, but for what I run. It requires me to change collet, set the one part, change collet back to my square stock collet and it takes to long. If I ran round stock, it is easier.

I have to do this everyday, it is just a pain. It would be nice to be able to come home from work, turn on the machine and run a part.

I did talk with Tormach and they are working on a solution, no eta though.

[Scharged]

Ok guys, here is what you do.
Buy two dial indicators, 0.250in travel, .0005in increments.
Make a L bracket and bolt, weld, glue or staple it to the top of the switch housing.
Get a piece of steel or alum and make a new stop at the end of Z.
You will have to weld a little funky tab onto the X switch target at the bottom end so X moves freely through out the range. Lay it out with cardboard, it doesn't have to be perfect, just rigid.
Set the indicators set so they don't bottom out when you home normally.
Once this is done, home normally.
Go to the settings tab and disable homing switches.
Back off about .050-.075in and set your zero.
Hit Ref X and or Z. It will ask you if you are sure, yup.
Now take a cut in X and Z......
E stop and rehome normally, disable, re-home and so on.

The only thing you need to do now is from this zero zero position, reset your tool offsets.
Pick one and start there.

Your X Work offset should always be zero.
Your Z Work offset will vary each time you hit zero on the DRO.
The beauty of this arrangement is that if you can set Z zero on any tool and the rest will follow.

It may take a little goofing around and checking in order for you to renew your confidence in the setup but it is well worth it.
Now if I bump the estop or hit it on purpose, I can rehome without going to a master tool, or taking small cuts (sometimes I can't) or pulling
the part and starting all over again.

Screwed around with optical switches and something in the homing cycle just isn't allowing things to work as I would like.

So, there you go.

Remember, Zero DRO for all tools, Touch X Z for single tool setup.
Zero out X
And if you G53 X0.0 Z0.0, it will drive to the home position.
You will be off by a few thou because you are traveling in the opposite direction from which you homed.