Well I bought one of these 6040 chinese pieces of crap. Took me a few months to work some things out. Anyway on to my problem. I am either getting confused or missing something wihen it comes to setting my z axis. Ok I can set up my fixtures just fine. I don't have limit switches yet or a touch probe. So I am doing this all manually right now. so I run my axis all to the negative such as x0y0 and z0 which is to the top of the stroke. Now another issue I am having is the native units when I first set the machine up I set it to inches but the DRO has always read out in mm. Could someone go through step by step on how to set my z so I wont crash my z axis. If anyone is near the Houston area or Beaumont area that would be help ful. Oh and yes I have watched the videos on homing and switches.

Thanks
Jason

Well I bought one of these 6040 chinese pieces of crap. Took me a few months to work some things out. Anyway on to my problem. I am either getting confused or missing something wihen it comes to setting my z axis. Ok I can set up my fixtures just fine. I don't have limit switches yet or a touch probe. So I am doing this all manually right now. so I run my axis all to the negative such as x0y0 and z0 which is to the top of the stroke. Now another issue I am having is the native units when I first set the machine up I set it to inches but the DRO has always read out in mm. Could someone go through step by step on how to set my z so I wont crash my z axis. If anyone is near the Houston area or Beaumont area that would be help ful. Oh and yes I have watched the videos on homing and switches.

Thanks
Jason

Native units are for set up only, nothing to do with what mc DRO's are reading, so if the native units and data are set correctly it's best to leave them alone.

I have one (well 87.%) of a Chinese pants mc, blame Pang :v or at least that was who sold mine

with no ref switches you cant reference the mc, however that's not a problem, just move the mc to your program zero,  then zero out each axis by clicking on the "x", "Y" and "Z" DRO's, or click on each figure in each DRO and then enter the figure that you require it to register.

all the info you need is in this forum and cnczone to do with those machines look and read all your answer are there.
you can set your soft limits set for z, x, y depending where you set your work start point i.e. left front corner so set x,y soft limits negative to -1, positive to end of travel for x and y. for your z just have a spot at the top of your z axis where you can ref it, move it down to top of work pieces zero it, as long as you turn soft limits of before you do this then turn them back on when everything is set there is less chance of crashing the machine as m3 will let you know there is a problem. and set your safe Z to 5mm.
I don't even use any limits at all on my big machine I just ref all home at a safe spot then zero it at work zero.
just remember m3 is a dum system it need to be told what to do, where its home is where its work is at