Right, stuff learnt
By trial and error I got the math right for tool offsets
Made up some sacrificial tools from 2mm ally Tig rods, master ref tool was longest and rest got shorter by random amounts around 10-12mm each
Put master tool (eventually my Haimer probe) in the drill chuck (easy for messing about) and set it
manually onto my touch-plate.
Ran my setting macro and stored the master offset, then fitted tool 1 and allowed the macro to auto-probe, then set that as tool 1 in the tool-table.
Rinse and repeat the last step up to tool number 4
Move the knee a bit, put tool zero (ref tool) in the Current Tool box,
manually ref the work (top of vise) and set Z zero
Change to tool 2, enter tool 2 in current tool box, MDI'd G0 Z0 and it went exactly where it should,
Repeat the last step with all tools and all went to the exact spot (top of material) - things were looking up, i could now use my four tools without re-refing the surface.
OK, what i did wrong which trashed my Z axis....
I had put tool 1 in the machine and entered tool 1 in the current tool box but then ran an auto-probe routine on the surface, expecting it to just set that tool as Z0 and then be able to carry on as normal with other tools.
I did it again and only sacrificed 6" of Tig rod this time, what happens is this....
Tool comes down at fast probe speed,
Touches off the plate,
Tool lifts 2mm,
Tool then plunges rapidly downwards.
So for some reason it seems you cannot use the 2010 screen simple probe macro with tool length offsets applied?
Scary stuff - so easy to trash things.
Is this normal or total operator failure??
Maybe i should block that macro running if tool number is >0 ??