So the long version of my problem is, I am trying to test my environment to prove I have it configured right.

I have Demo version of featureCam (I found some really awesome instructional videos on youtube from the University of Wisconsin)
I have a Licensed copy of Mach3  
I basically want to Surface a block of Wax to prove I can control the CnC and work from there.
I wont go into the problems I have with Feature Cam just yet, I think my problems are specific to my setup.


I downloaded 540BVFD.xml from someplace, and started hacking to make it work, but I found that I think I changed too many things, so I started fresh today, I created a new Profile.

In Config-> Ports & Pins -> Motor Outputs :
- I have  Y,Y,Z enabled.
- Pins and Dir Pins set according to my Gecko board.
- Dir Low Active and Step Low are all (red X's)
- Step Port and Dir Port all set to 1's

When I have this configuration setup, I find I have the following problems.
- X axis is reversed
- Z axis is Reversed
- Y axis is Fine.
- and When I do a "Ref All Home" the Z axis homes to the bottom.

I found, that if I change the following:
- In Config -> homing and Limits.
 I was able to reverse the X axis, Z axis, and Home Neg the Z Axis.

And after doing this, the hardware performs as I expect it should.

Question #1,   is this the right way?
Question #2,  Why do I have 2 axis reversed?

I also noticed, after looking at my previous profile, I could mess around with the direction of the Z and X axis, by setting DIR LowActive in Config-> Ports & Pins -> Motor Outputs.

Question #3,  which setting is the better one to get it behaving properly?


One of the problems I ran into in Feature Cam, is when I loaded my Gcode, my X,Y tried to home to the X+, and that's what caused me to investigate my settings.
(I am also having a problem where when I import my Gcode from FeatureCam, there is a discrepency of size, the mill will travel 100mm, when I tell it too, but the gcode is doing something else.(but I am not ready to tackle this problem till I know the environment is working.)

1) No, Z positive should be up, and you should home up.

2) It could be the way the motor is wired, or just the direction the motor turns in relation to the table. That's why there are options to reverse the motor.

3) It doesn't really matter, but I use the Reverse option in the Homing Limits screen

Ok, It never occurred to me, that it could be wired right and the table orientation could be whats messing me up.

Thanks tons!