Question 1) Using Mach3 on a lathe. Working in inches and absolute mode. Have spindle axis setup as Zed and negative toward spindle on left facing lathe from front and positive to right, toolpost in front. My questions are, if X-axis is positive away from me standing facing the lathe with spindle to the left, shouldn't the DRO for X increase toward the positive when I move the cross slide away from me. It currently goes negative. I have 4 home limit switches on the lathe. One at each end of the Zed axis and one at each end of the X axis. I set machine zero by setting home on the Zed axis to the right most positive direction switch and the x axis toward me the supposedly most negative direction switch. Is this correct? Is the DRO supposed to go negative as the x axis is moved in the positive direction?
Question 2) When zeroing a part in the lathe do you place cursor on Progdata so LED is on, touch part on outside edge of part to be turned and then click on ZERO axis for X and Zed? When I try to run a Wizard program for simple turning that way when the program starts it pulls away from the part but continues to move back and forth and feed in and out in air in front of the part it should be turning. I am in diameter mode, and set the start X at +1 for a 1" diameter stock and end at 0.75 if I want to take 0.25 off. Z is set at 0 to start and -0.5 to end. The Z axis seems to work fine the x axis works as above. Are there any manuals describing the Wizards?
Question 3) Is Part Zeroing for parting off the workpiece, is it set by move to the point of where you want to part off the workpiece and then zeroing each?
Question 3) How do I correct for backlash, what number(s) is placed in the backlash compensation screen and how do I determine them?
Sorry for all the questions I think Mach3 is great I just need to understand it better?
Thanks,
Dave