Hi folks, I have been trying to get some form of tool zeroing work for my converted mill and lathe. Hoss has what seems to be a very good screenset for the mill, but I have not been able to find the same for Mach3Turn. When I select "Auto Tool Zero" on the main screen an error message "Not Yet Implemented" is displayed. Has someone out there written a script to enable this functionality or is my installation corrupt? Any help with this would be much appreciated!

My original plan was to take a piece of stock that is 1.00" in diameter and chuck it in the lathe. Then I would use a PCB board with a known height to place between the tool and the piece of stock. When the tool completed the circuit with the PCB, I would have an accurate position of the tool. I could repeat this procedure with the other tools and given that the AXA toolholder maintained the same angle, I should have repeatable cuts over time.

After a bit of thought on this, maybe there is another way that people deal with zeroing tools? Is there a better procedure to set the tool depths?
Thanks!
-Chris

Hi.

In your method I see some problems, at first if your 1" is not totally round or centered with the chuck there goes your zero point.
The best way (for me at least) is to turn a real part, measure the diameter then set your tool.

My lathe have an auto zero, but the tools are always fixed (they do not move on the 12 tool toolholder).

Filipe

Thanks Filipe for the response. You make some good points about cutting and measuring the actual piece. I'll try that tonight and see how it goes. The AXA tool holder is pretty nice, but I am starting to wish for a retrofit toolchanger I finally got around to making an adapter for the AXA that will mount a drill chuck for center drilling and drilling. Once I can get reliable tool zeroing this should make cycle times much shorter than with manually using the tailstock.