Please help, I need some addvise

Let me start out by saying this would probably be terribly funny if I wasn't bleeding from my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth! Just when I think I have an understanding here, and have things working, I find out that isn't the case at all.
Maybe it's just objectivity, I'm too close to it.

An overview:
I have ascending positive numbers when X and Y move away from home.
I have ascending negative numbers when Z moves (down) away from home.

The attached hal and ini will home X and Y correctly, Z gets the following errors.
“Exceeded positive soft limit on joint2”
“Exceeded negative soft limit on joint2”
In this order.

I have tried so many combinations I can't list or recall them all, or the results.
(I just know they don't work).
It's almost ridiculous to think someone can set me straight from a far and distant land but I am completely spun out and need some kind of direction.
If someone would be kind enough to have a look at the hal and ini to see if they can help me.
(Pathetic isn't it)!

Ya know I had those settings at one point and another issue (can't recall which one it was now) made me give it up.
Just ran the axis.ngc start to finish. Wuppee.
I have some dropped step problems.
I'll check my machine (PC) for proper settings, (via manual and testing) as the hal and ini were a gift from Arceye, the settings were at best general in nature I'm sure.
We/I expected they would need twicking.
The saga continues.

Thanks to all.

Or is that tweeking??

Well it finally looks like I am finally going to get around to converting one of our Anaheim Automation controlled machines from Microsystems of Buckhannon's DOS CNC Controler. Pulling a more or less mothballed machine back into production. The main reason for switching, running a new file on the old control is taking 70 min, running the same file with LinuxCNC using the same feed rates, and accelerations is only taking 40 min. The file in question is cutting out a 4x8 sheet full of script font words. It uses a lot of short G2 and G3 segments, I am guessing that the old DOS program must not be dealing well with the arc segment transitions as well as LinuxCNC does. Which seems a little strange to me since one of the main reasons I had not converted one of these machines yet is that earlier testing I had done comparing these two programs when running engraving files (what we use most of our Anaheim powered machines for LinuxCNC was slower. But the engraving files are exclusively G1 commands.

Todd,

Please share as much as you can about your experience, I would enjoy hearing about how this goes.
You clearly have a better understanding about the inter workings of all this than I do.
I would appreciate any enlightenment.

A thirty minute spread turns into real money!

Well right now I'm waiting for a box from newegg.com.

I may or may not work on the config some before it gets here. Depends on my free time.

Our machine is a 4 axis, X,Y,Z,W (basically it has 2 Z axis with 2 spindles). So it is a 3-axis with a twist, that is actually more complicated than you might think. At least with the ways I want to deal with it. Fortunatly since this is a stepper machine, that will simplify my problems imensly. Alot of my desires for how the ZW are implimented were nearly insurmaountable on the servo conversion of a simular machine I recently finished.

Let me ask another question.

If on the Z axis the top of the table is 0.000 and you travel up the axis with negative numbers, is the limit for
"min-home-z" at 0.000 or is it at the top of travel, (in my case -6.000)?

That is to say, is -6.000 the minumum position?
logicaly, the larger negative number would be the minumal value.

Andy,

That's interesting, when they are reversed I had the problem below.

allenwg2005 wrote:
“Exceeded positive soft limit on joint2”
“Exceeded negative soft limit on joint2”
In this order.

The problem is that your MIN_LIMIT is larger than your MAX_LIMIT.

Swap them.

I have a theory, please let me know what you think.

My Z axis was travelling down when I would “page up” and up when I would “page down”.
I inverted the Z step direction pin to compensate for this issue.

I wounder if my driver settings for cw ccw are wrong and confusing the entire Z configuration?

If I'm forcing a direction change, and then need to compensating for that by reverse values on limits, I could be chasing my tail here?

The reason I ask all this is, I have homing working with min-home down ( the lowest point on Z).
That as you point out is wrong.

If it is the driver jumper settings, I have another problem.
Anaheim Automation says they have no documentation for this drive. (Apparently it's that old).
Without docs. I have no idea how to change the direction on the drivers.

Your thought?