I see various mentions of 66 having issues regarding turning, so what's the newest recommended version for turn?
Or more precisely, what are the known bugs in the later versions?
I think my little lathe is still running 22, and I adopted the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" attitude so have never bothered upgrading it to any of the later versions, however for the new lathe I figured I'd better update a bit.


How do people handle tool offsets with turrets?
I know you can have tool x loaded in tool position y, but when the tools are swapped, they're never likely to ever clamp back in the exact same position, so is there anypoint in having offsets for every tool when they'll need to be reset when the tool is refitted?

I cant remember all the issues I had but one was homing via a macro, just screwed up. Another was I think the tool wear offsets didnt work correctly, think if in Dia mode the value was doubled. Few other things mentioned by others but cant recall.

I think I use 057 but would have to check. It was about 057 version that Brian sorted a few things for me, things such as the tool description being tied to the actual offset number rather than the tool number as previously. Also he added some DRO OEMs so you can have the full tool number and offset number displayed in a DRO. Or you can have the offsets in a seperate if you wish.
He also added the ability to have a T displayed in the DRO, see pic below.

Regarding changing out tools, it will depend on your turret but for mine I can repeat to within maybe 0.01 or 0.02mm, thus you can adjust with wear offsets rather than having to set up offsets again. I have all my tools set up in the tool table, I also have a page in my screenset that displays all tools so I can reference what is what at any time.

Hood

Thanks for that.
I'll grab a copy of 57.

My turret just has wedges for normal square shank tools, so although Z will be fairly repeatable, X won't.
Boring bar/drill holders are bolt on, so should be reasonably repeatable, but only if I make enough holders to avoid swapping tools.

Should be repeatable in X as well, is there not a face that you butt the end of the tools against?
Same with boring bars, easy to repeat. Have a piece of stock faced to Z0, call the boring bar in question, put the bar in a bit further, bring it to Z Zero and slide it forward to touch the stock and tighten.

Hood

Nah, the tool slots are clear all the way to the centre mounting hole.

Setting up seperate offsets will have the advantage of the offsets being somewhat near where they need to be, so saving a little bit time when swapping out tools. I'll try it once I get things up and running and see what's going to work best.

Should be relatively easy to fix in some form of stops, whether that be a hex section bolted to the centre or individual capscrews set into the ed of each slot.

One other things you may no have noticed from my screenshot above, it is well worth setting up tools for different nose rad inserts. For example if you look at my tool table screen above you will see tool 4, 16 and 28 are all the same tool but just different offsets for 0.4mm, 0.8mm and 1.2mm radius inserts.
Hood