Hello all, this is my first post. So I'm totally new to this machine, Makino FNC74. The guy that ran it before me passed away and I was brought in to get it running. I've ran Haas, Fadal, Kitamura and Bridgeports w/no problems. This one's special. For one it's ancient, it's even got a tape reader.

Anyway, I've found a few of it's quirks all by trial and error and by searching this board. The tool changer is funky but I was able to figure it out. So now I'm pretty sure I got it, but there's a couple of issues I'm not to clear on. For one, how do you set your z tool length offsets, or all your offsets for that matter? I think I got the (01) G54 but I'm not exactly sure. When I try to set the z offsets, it seems to work, however some tools when they retract, don't stop at z0 and they over-travel, setting off the trip, thus getting an alarm. Also the machine has a "absolute" button. When it's on, it totally ignores the offsets and goes to another set of numbers. When I turn it off, everything's fine. Do you set your tools w/this button on? I do all my programming in absolute (G90) so to me it makes sense to have it on.

I'd like to hear from someone who uses this same machine or similar, and would like to know how you typically set it up to run your part program. I'm using Gibbscam w/a generic Fanuc 6M post. Thanks in advance for your responses.