Sand? Thru the woods, mostly roots and feeding mosquitos! 83 degrees today. Amazing what a Bedbug trencher can do. Best 100 bucks I ever spent! 2000 feet laid and covered up in about 1 1/2 days alone. It ran thru huge roots and stopped on a piece of Romex, didnt even nick the jacket. Though it did cut right thru my cable. Just weird on that one. Fixing my cable was plenty. What is that saying? 2 steps forward and 1 step back? Today I was 1 step forward overall. Tool offsets better watch out cause here I come. Also after a few nights of rest and not reading forums, I have an idea I need to quit trying to compensate thru the DRO's while touching off. It is a hypothesis (well not so edumacated!) anyway.

Ok here goes again, try this I probably told you the wrong button before. As I said I dont use the standard screen as it has never made much sense to me, especially all the jumping from screen to screen that is needed with it.

1.Home your machine
2.Make sure you MDI T101
3.Take a cut of a piece of stock and keeping the X at the same position move back off stock and then measure the stock Dia (assuming you use Dia mode)
4.Go to ToolTable page and enter the measured Dia into the Part Zero Coords for X Dia DRO and press Touch X button
5.Open Tool Table and press Apply then OK
6. Move tool and take a facing cut and zero the Z DRO (not Part zeroing DRO)
7. Call T202 and repeat step 3 to 5 for new tool
8.Touch tool off end of stock but this time make sure Part Zeroing DRO for Z is Zero and then press Touch Z button (Do not alter the actual Z DRO, it will change when you press that button)
9. Open Tooltable press apply then OK
10 repeat from 7 to 9 for next tool etc etc.

Hood
6

On my screen I have a MDI box on the tool setting page and also my Set X and Set Z buttons are VB buttons which makes the process quicker and easier.
My buttons have

X button is

DoOemButton(324)
Sleep 100
DoOemButton(121)

Z button is

DoOemButton(326)
Sleep 100
DoOemButton(121)

In them, what that toes is press the Touch X or Z button which updates the tool table then automatically opens the tool table so that you can apply and OK it.

Having the MDI on the page makes it much easier than having to jump back and forth to change tools.
Hood

Well I just set up my new home made turret today with the method mentioned above and it worked great so should work fine for you. Previously I had a Home Off value set for my master tools X value, ie no offset in the tool table but this time I set the X home switch as my "master tool" and it worked fine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfyQE5125M&list=UUNEcFI4fdD5kV938uchW3sg&index=1&feature=plcp
Hood

Hood & Rich Thanks as always. That did get me much closer. I can now get tools 4 & 6 (only using tools 1,4 & 6) to touch off repeatedly in the same place (close enough to realize the offests are close to correct). Tool 1 is giving me fits. I also notice at times that somehow communication is being lost. I see the Dros moving in X but the axis is against a physical stop. Then when I go to jog, x control is lost. The dros move but the steppers dont. That has got to wreak havoc on achieving correct offsets wouldnt you think? Before running the Smoothstepper I never lost control of a stepper.
   Also after touching the first tool in X and setting the diameter in the (X) Part Zero Dro and pressing the touch button. Do you install the diameter in the (X) Part Zero Dro for every tool or do you use 0 for setting every subsequent tool?
   I am getting closer but I might have to pull the SS out to figure out what is happening. There just seems to be too many variables. OK 2 steps back.

That just showed me it works for you. I had no doubt you had it figued out. How about a video of you setting up the tool offsets? That is the big lathe I read about you converting? Front and rear turret?

Well I just set up my new home made turret today with the method mentioned above and it worked great so should work fine for you. Previously I had a Home Off value set for my master tools X value, ie no offset in the tool table but this time I set the X home switch as my "master tool" and it worked fine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfyQE5125M&list=UUNEcFI4fdD5kV938uchW3sg&index=1&feature=plcp
Hood

I homed, I called T101  brought x in to dia of a bar and took a cut and measured then set X Part Zero DRO to the dia I just measured and pressed my set X button which is the equivelent of the touch X. The tooltable opens due to the extra code in my button and I applied and saved. Then tok a facing cut and zeroed the Z DRO (not part zero DRO) Then called T202 and touched off X and entered that into Part Zero DRO for X and pressed my set X then moved to touch that tool off the end, entered 0 in Z Part zero DRO and pressed Set Z button then on to next tool.

To me it sounds like your m6start.m1s macro may be causing issues, do you have moves in it?
Hood

I will see if I get a chance to do a short vid of setting a tool up.
It originally had a front 4 way post and rear six pos turret. I got a 6 pos turret for the front and now have done away with that and put a home made 12 pos on the rear. I plant to have a fixed block on the front for big boring bars/drills of 50mm dia and will also have dovetails on the side so I can use the holders that were previously used on the turret I had on the front.
Hood

Hood that would really be appreciated by myself and a few others here in the back of the class. YOU MADE THAT TURRET? Wow! I really cant expect anything to work with this movement or lack of movement issue though.
  Also when you press Part Zero X you dont need to press Touch X too? (they are the same?) I noticed at 1 point trying to make sense of what I was doing that if I pressed touch X more than once it kept adding offsets. Not realizing what was happening or why (still dont but quit pressing it) I had an offset on 1 tool in X of 52", like that was going to happen. This lathe is bigger than my Sherline but it aint that big! No reason to even try to verify that tools final location on my machine. Again I cant thank you enough for the personal tutorials.

Yes been working on making it the last few weeks, heres the posts I have done on my progress
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,1234.200.html

I dont press Part Zero button at all, I had previously mentioned that button but that was a mistake  as my screenset is different than standard and what I should have said was Touch X touch Z buttons.
 I enter the value into the Part Zero DRO then press Touch X or Touch Z. As said my screen is different and buttons named differently but its more or less the same.

Hood