Thanks for that info Bob.  That did indeed take care of the jogging being reversed with soft limits on.  Any idea why my Z travels up now when I try to probe z zero?  Also if I switch stuff around to where it does go down and run the routine the values on the DRO still aren'r correct. 

Chris...

If your talking about the probing screen then your dro is showing 1 which is in the plus direction, change to -1

DazTheGas

From Artsoft support:

With your probe (or whatever you are using for one).....in the rub screen manually jog down to a reasonable height over the piece you wish to probe. you should set the Z to zero in the dro, as the probe move is an absolute move. Next click on the probing tab....enter in a value in the z position that you know will have the probe travel far enough to contact the work piece...If you zeroed the z this value should be a negative number. Next click on the measurement type so that the set fixture (G54) is lit up... this will inevitably set your z offset. Next you are ready to probe.. click the measure Z button.. this will start the probe cycle... When cycle is done the number that is put into your Z dro will be the absolute distance above the work piece you actually are...thus making the top of the part Z zero. You can double check this by jogging down to the top of the piece. Your DRO should be at Zero.

Ok...


     So it's been running the probing routine correctly for about 20 times now.  Daz I did the + and - before but I was getting mixed results.  I think part of the problem troubleshooting is that it seems to behave differently at times and also if you close and re-open the program.  So at one point it went down then stopped...  Then I tried to probe again and it just kept going up.  I closed and reopened mach4 and then it probed down again.  lol     So it appears to sets the DRO (only if set Fixture G54 is selected, other have said not to select it) to the height that you had the bit above the gauge block before kicking off the zero routine.  Is there a way for it to add the 1" that is my gauge block or am I on my now to edit the DRO to that value?   Mach4 will also not run the probing routine at all if the soft limits are enabled.  It will make you think it's going to but the machine never moves and you get the error about no contact with probe. 

Thanks guys for all the help thus far...

Chris... 

     

Hello,
I just bought license for Mach 4 and for Darwin plugin.
I want to mention that I am new on this, so please do not get me wrong if I will say something stupid.
The the machine is working, I forgot to mention, I am using Mach4 version 2.2872 and Darwin plugin version 2.2763.
What I would need is two things:
First, I need to know if there is an “Auto Tool Zero” script that allows me to check the height of each mill I am changing the mills manually. So if there is, I home someone can provide it.
Second, I need to turn the piece and to mill it also on one side. To do this this, I would need to setup again the X, Y and Z but taking in consideration the new position of the piece. So, I need to do a probe and to find out the new X, the new Y and the new Z coordinates. More than this, I need to use the tool itself as a touch probe. So does know somebody how to do it?
If there is someone that can help me, I need explanation step by step, as I mentioned I am new with Mach4.