Originally Posted by
the_gentlegiant
Forget you ever heard that nonsense about touching off the spindle face. I see some youtubers doing that and find it absurd. Under what circumstance are you ever going to be cutting anything with the spindle face??? It's a terrible choice for a reference. Half the time you might have fixtures or obstacles of some kind in the way were you cant get the spindle nose close enough to touch off anyway. They are also constantly using the Relative position display. Another waste of time and effort. I've set thousands of tools on thousands of jobs just like or a lot like you're doing without ever looking at it. No problems. In 20 years I've probably used the Relative display five times, just to check something.
What you're doing is a perfectly good way to do things. The only thing you care about is what the Machine Coordinates Display says when you touch your tool off on Z Zero, or some other standard repeatable surface you've chosen as your master. (I know the spindle face could be used in a backwards fashion as this, but it's still a terrible idea.) Who cares how long the tool is from the spindle face? You're only concern is how far it is from the workpiece. Note that if you're using an offline tool presetter, that is a whole different story, but that's not your case here. Let me put it this way... never once have I ever touched a spindle face to anything. If I did it would be a crash.
Good luck with your CNC endeavors. You're on the right track.