It is exactly as you say: When homed, the Y reads 598. I have inserted 598 in Home Off.
How do I set my Soft Limits?

Going back to the CONFIG >>> LIMITS page http://i47.servimg.com/u/f47/14/07/22/66/home_l10.jpg

If you enter the following in:
Axis ----Soft Max ---- Soft Min ----- Slow Zone -------- Speed
X ------- 422 ----------- 0 -------------- 100 ----------------- 25%
Y ------- 599 ----------  0 -------------- 100 ----------------- 25%
Z ------- 0 -------minus (-) 82 -------- 30 ------------------ 25%

and press the home button (locate the machine in the middle of the bed + mid z height... so it does not crash into anything...)

It should do as intended.

Rob

That done and it all works !
Thanks Rob, you are a star.


David

No problem David, happy machining.

Note you may need to tune the z axis soft stop relative to your bed, and spindle or router and presuming you have a spoil board...

Consider this that your z axis has 82mm of travel, but by the time you have a router or spindle in the tool holder, and a downward projecting chuck, and a spoil board on your bed, the effective travel distance will be less... Then you add a cutter to the spindle or router, now your z axis travel is very much reduced

Hence if you told the machine to decend 80mm it will most definitely crash into the spoil board

Hence you may need to tweak the soft limit for the z axis, to something like 1mm below the spoil board with a cutting tool installed.

Someone may be able to give some better guidance, because I'm sure that you could via script reset the z axis soft limit every time you install a new tool, and use g31 to set tool offsets

Rob

I'll bear that in mind, thanks.
I've learnt  a great deal these last two days and I am sat here reading the Mach3 guide and actually starting to understand it.

David

I have done quite a bit these last few days. A cuple of small issue cropped up today.

1. The Yellow Abnormal conditions LED in Mach3 came up.
It says “Axis are not refed to normal”

2. When I press “Go to zero” after cutting, the Z axis goes up to its physical stop and the Reset button lights, the machine obviously stops.

Any ideas?

Copied from here: https://en.industryarena.com/forum/axis-not-refed-normal-conditions--53149-2.html

For those of you still fighting with this, I think I got it figured out:
Assuming your machine works perfectly well and you still get that annoying Yellow light "Abnormal Condition" .....clicking on it gives the hint "Axis are not Refed to Normal Condition"
....You need to inform Mach3 what a normal condition is for your setup:
Start-up Mach3 and click [Ref All Home] when all axes have homed to their limit switches, click drop-down menu [Operator] and select [Set Normal Condition]
Mach3 should now accept this state as the "Normal Condition" and you should have a Green light indicating such when the machine has been home referenced.
Worked for me!

Thanks, I've done that. I did notice the Yellow LED flashed just before the Z reached its home but went out again.

Item 2 is it not triggering the soft limit?

You may need to change to upper soft limit to +1 (ie 1mm above zero as zero is the home switch...?

Someone else may have a view
Rob

I'll have to wait until tomorrow to try that. My wife has painted the stairs, so I cannot get to my room.