Using the jog arrows in the move tab doesn’t always work. Sometimes it woks but mainly doesn’t. Any XY direction ends up only going in the positive direction and it won’t jog in the negative direction. I had hoped to use this feature and am having to use the command line entry and key in my movements there.
I have found the same for quite some time, for me it happens after switching back and forth to continuous jog.
If both of you can provide a .mage file where this happens, it would be a great help. I too have experienced strange Jog behaviour, but was too busy to drill into the cause.
Using the jog arrows, in continuous mode, in the move tab doesn’t always work. Sometimes it woks but mainly doesn’t. Any XY direction ends up only going in the positive direction and it won’t jog in the negative direction. I had hoped to use this feature and am having to use the command line entry and key in my movements there.
Where/how can I upload a file? I went in and created a new project and it did it. So I saved it and can send that.
The $J continous jog movement uses G53 (machine coordinates) to try to send the machine towards (what it thinks is) your machine’s min and max range (e.g. X0 to X500).
If your machine zero is set to front left in MillMage when it should be set to rear right, this would result in always-positive continous jog movements if you are actually operating within a negative machine coordinate space like this:
Other movements would be ok because G90 job movements are relative to Workpiece Zero and standard G91 jogging or job movements only care about direction and distance from the current position.
Very interesting. I have always used this machine with a zero zero in the front left. Performing a home command moves it to the front left. I don’t know how the inner workings work but in my mind, moving in a negative X or Y direction would still move away from the upper right, even if it were in negative space. I guess I don’t need to know they “why” it doesn’t work other than it doesn’t work. The really odd thing is that it does work sometimes; usually not.
Just drag it into the Reply, or use the little Upload icon in the Reply box.
After homing, what does the your Machine Position show as in the Move Window? Are they negative coordinates?
The machine shows machine actual position as negative.
I have been looking into my machine and the lower left is usually considered the zero zero. By default, the homing limits are set at the maximum for X, Y, and Z. It is common to set the zero to MIN X & Y and leave Z zero at max. That is how I set my machine when I installed limit switches. I may do some experiments where I pretend the limit switches are at XY max and see how that reacts. I will update the $23 according for that experiment. If that works, I may install limit switches at XY max as well as keeping my XY min switches.
That works. The icon for upload didn’t jump out at me as an upload icon. I see that now AND I did just drag the file here. I hope this helps.
Continuous Jog.mage (9.0 KB)
I hope this helps. It is a very basic project with nothing on it but the basic setup.
This was something that didn’t make sense but could be related. My machine does have a zero zero in the front left. I also have my limit switches set for MIN X&Y. Some sources indicate that the limit switches should be X&Y MAX. That is how the machine defaulted when I got it. I have updated the homing to be the min X&Y ($23=3). Z still zeros at its max. I may experiment with that to see if zeroing at max help the jog work properly? Should be easy enough to test.
Just set machine zero to the back right corner, the homing should not be affected.
I performed this test and the continuous job still didn’t move in the negative direction. 
Well, that is the strangest thing. I changed deffinition in MillMages for where the zero zero is for XY to be the back right and the continuous job now works. I homed the machine as set the front left as zero zero and pretended to cut a part and it seemed to be in the correct location.
I don’t understand why but it works. The issue is that this machine’s XY zero is the front left.
Maybe you are confusing Home with Origin.
Home - A machine physical location determined by limit switches. It cannot be moved (by physically relocating the switches) to any location other than one of the 4 corners. The controller may set this location to 0,0 for the Origin, but not always.
Origin - A software or program location designated as the 0,0 location. The Origin can be anywhere within the machine frame. Moving the Origin requires a strong working knowledge of graphic coordinate systems. Lightburn requires operating in the First quadrant, where all locations are +X+Y values. MillMage is happy there too.
G54 - A work coordinate offset, normally all zeroes. If any of the 3 positions (X, Y, or Z on that order) are non-Zero, then the numbers are algebraically added to the Origin numbers. This essentially moves the “working” Origin to a new location.
That could be. The term “Origin” seems to be loosely used. I have seen Working Origin, Machine Origin, Origin,… It can be confusing unless it is clear what someone means by origin. In digging a little more, I have found some information about my machine and the actual machine origin is the upper right. Everything else I find on this talks about the origin being the lower left and what they mean is the working origin or as you and I might call it, Home.
Thank you for the clarification on this as I am sure it will be greatly helpful for others.
Home is a machine mechanical reference and is always at the limit switches. In most cases, it cannot be moved.
Machine Origin: Origin is set to 0,0 where the machine Homes.
Working Origin: This is the software or part program Origin. It can be shifted around with the G54-G59 (Work Coordinate Offset) commands. Or the Set Origin button.
Origin: By itself, it usually refers to the program or design Origin.
Yeah, loosely defined, or redefined, terms drive me nuts too. 
Maybe not “always”. 
It would seem that my machine zero zero is the upper right and it homes to lower left (that is where the limit switches are located). This is set with a homing mask in the $23 parameter. My machine is set to $23=3.
Is an Origin reference. You can see in MillMage stuff like X0, Y-508, Z-67 when it Homes. That is where the machine thinks it is mechanically. In the Move window, you see a Machine (mm): row and a Workpiece (mm): row. When you start moving stuff around graphically, but not move the machine, that first row will not change. It changes only if you Jog the machine to a new location.
That parameter only determines which direction it should travel to find the limit switches. Change it and see what happens (be sure you have a backup copy of the parameters!).
It has been a few years since I added limit switches to this machine and I do not remember how it came from the factory. I could do a reset but would rather not go through everything to get it set back how it is now. I have played with the $23 setting recently and when set to $23=0, it does try to home in the upper right as expected. Again, I do not remember how it was set when I got it as the machine did not come with limit switches.
I had planned on adding limit switches to both ends of the machine travel. Once I got the homing switches in place, I got lazy and decided not to add the others. They would only help prevent a crash if the controller lost track of its real location. That is something I have only seen happen once. Not counting when I manually moved something and when I do that, I am extra careful about movements. I do have soft limits set and they seem to work well.
That is the exception to “Can’t move Home”. My Sculpfun SF-A9 came with switches on all 4 corners. I left Home at the front left (Quadrant 1) because that is where Lightburn likes it.
If it ain’t broke, don’t break it. 