Oops lost machine coordinates can anyone help?

[dme2637]

I use mach 3 software.

[martin54]

No you do not have to write down co-ordinates to get back to your original zero position if you take the time to set your machine up properly to start with. Far to much for me to try & explain though so your best bet would be to watch the video on Homing, Limit's & offsets on mach3 support site.

http://www.machsupport.com/videos/

[ger21]

After you zero the X and Y axis, you should go tot he offsets page and Save the Offsets. This will let mach3 remember them if you lose power. Since Mach3 normally saves when you close it, it may not remember them if it loses power.

[zeeway]

After zeroing x and y relative to the material, I switch to machine coordinates, and make a note of the x and y values. While Mach 3 is usually good about remembering where it was, the written note always "remembers" perfectly...presuming I wrote down the correct values.

Angie

[TReischl]

If that is a USB smooth stepper... throw it away... and get the ESS smooth stepper, which is ethernet, you will save money, and blood pressure spikes.
The USB smoothstepper is a good piece of electronics .... the Problem is Microsoft Windows and how it interacts with USB.
Roy

That may have been your experience and some others, but I have not had one single issue with my USB Smoothstepper.

[metalworkz]

We have a USB smooth stepper on our smaller machine and there are several problems we have encountered with our setup. First we had our Home switches wired in series and could not 'Home all' with Mach. We were just homing one axis at a time until we re-wired the Home switches in a parallel configuration. The other problem is more of a headache once in a while and that is some kind of a timeout error that we sometimes encounter. It involves having to restart Mach and mostly becomes a problem if in the process of running toolpaths and we let the machine sit idle too long in between the toolpaths etc. Not as much of a problem unless you start up without homing the axis and have already ran some toolpaths, so is a pain to get things set up correctly again.
On my large machine I used the ESS and have not encountered any problems with it.