Quote Originally Posted by Neale View Post
I'm a bit concerned that anyone thinks that "going past zero" is in any way relevant when you are using Mach3/UCCNC. Maybe in the days of archaic controllers that did not have any homing/work offset capability, this might have mattered but not today.
The Problem here Neale is that word HOME confuses people. They mix it up with WORK ZERO and think that HOME is where the JOB starts.
99% of new users fall foul of this so when I deliver machines to new users I always spend at least 30mins or more explaining and showing how the COORDINATE SYSTEM's and WORK OFFSETS relate to each other and how they relate to CAD etc.

Now John11668: and anyone else who doesn't quite understand. This is where SOFT LIMITS can come into play to save the day.? Let us say your HOME (machine zero)position is at the end of travels on each axis and you have 1000mm of travel.

You ZERO the WORK coordinate 100mm from the MACHINE ZERO. The job is drilling holes in a 1000mm long piece of stock with the last hole located 990mm from 0. What do think will happen .?.....Yep CRASH.!! . . Because your last hole would actually be located 1090mm from MACHINE ZERO. . . . But not if you have SOFTLIMTS turned on because the controller will pre-run through the G-code when you first load it and will warn you that you are going to exceed the SOFT LIMITS and the day is saved...

So hopefully this shows how MACHINE ZERO and WORK OFFSETS play together.