Converting a Boxford 250B

I spent another evening fighting it. I may be onto something.
I have the tool edit window open. When I touch off in Axis I get a message in the tool edit window that it has changed. Of course, so I Reload the table. I got suspicious when it did not seem to change, so I opened the tool table in a text editor. And what happens is that it does not load the tool table, it stores it! It seems I should have used ReRead instead. So load means load the file from the editor?

I think I will refrain from using the tool table editor and just use the text editor and see if that helps.
Although I think the reason I opened the tool table editor in the first place was that I did not get what I expected from just doing it in Axis.
So maybe I did one formal mistake in the beginnning, and after that I was just doing/undoing for two evenings. I now know that is what the manual says, so there I have for reading the buttons and not the fine print. I just hope that was it.

Zzzzz... Next day today, and I'd just tell you yes, it was as I assumed. Don't know what the initial error was, but the bulk of wasted time is caused by what I did in the 2 programs were fighting each other.
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I put 3 fingers in a wood planer today! Ouchh! Now done bleeding and got them packed in bandages it seems pushing buttons is an activity that hurts the least.
Good advice: Check that brain is engaged before pulling hands out of pockets!
One thing I started looking at is the velocity and acceleration figures. It seems to me that MAX_ACCELERATION and PID.P both influence acceleration. How do these interact?
Also what is interaction between MAX_VELOCITY / PID_MAX_VEL?
I set up a cheap indicator and zero Z at indicator zero. Then run G1 F<Test value> and G1 F1000 to check that top speed is not too high. Assuming the first may loose steps but the other not, so that the error one way will not cancel out on the return. Maybe it would be better to reverse those two, but the indicator is really very cheap.
What values would be most useful to watch in HalScope?
I notice that PID.I is zero. What would be a suggestion for it?

Yes, it seems I can set P to pretty much what I want. If there is any difference it seems to be more P will give less following error and a more "noisy" following error (in the scope). I can be set to no more than .01 or that axis will sound like a metronome.
I think I will leave it as is now since it accelerates fine and does not seem to loose steps.

I swapped a tool today and now have the same griefs with the tool table. I tried everything I can think of. Even calling up the tooltable in a text editor and entering a number corrected by the offset from the DRO. Reloading the tool table in Axis after that does nothing! The Z DRO does not change, neither does the TLO Z DRO. If I then touch off Z again Axis will overwrite the tool table with the wrong value again. Changing focus to the editor I get a message it is changed outside it. I re-read it, and sure enough am back to (almost) exactly what it was. I don't really dare going to 2.7, and suppose this cannot be a common bug in 2.6.0~pre or it would have been known. I also tried to correct the tool table before starting LCNC but it did not do much good.

I can try again until it works, as that seemed do do it the last time. But I cannot spend a day every time I swap a tool! I need to figure out what this is.

ATM I don't trust it to run a part. The toolholders in there are not expensive, but I don't have replacements if they crash.
I need to find a place they sell round chocolate bars so I have something to run test cuts in. One thing it seems I can trust is the home switches. It seems there is no need to touch off X G54 each time I turn the machine back on.

I suspect my lack of understanding the G54 offset may be my problem. Let's assume I don't have a clue what it is. It is an offset, but from what? I think I need to wipe my notion of what it is and start again from scratch. Obviously not from machine zero, it is way too small for that.

What I did already is to use tool 1 as a "master tool", do a face cut and set G54 to 0. Then use that face to set tool Z to 0 after bringing each other tool to that face. That seems to set G54 to the offset from my previous tool setting session. And the tool settings will be off by the difference from my previous session to my current.

I still have not understood the tool table but my procedure seems to work, so I'll stick to it for now.

I'm trying to use Fusion360 CAM. Still not a success, I need to inspect/correct the post before commiting it, using the Tormach SlantPro postprocessor.

One I did not catch was that my spindle needs to run the opposite way of normal since the turret is behind and tools are mounted with cutting edges facing up. The cut was anything but nice and then the edge broke off the insert. Strange looking breakage though. It just chipped off the top. Then it dawned on me as I was about to try again. This time I looked at the chuck when spinning up and could see it was the wrong direction. I cannot see that at >3000RPM. A fix in the postprocessor fixed that. I'm afraid it will throw some errors in other operations though, but then I'll know the reason.

There are other problems too. It sends Z to # 5422 after each op. I just comment that one out in the postprocessor.

Lathe CAM in Fusion360 is still pretty basic, but for the price (free) it is the best
There is no way to design your own tools. My favourite: YNMG is not there. Neither are my threading tools, although I can use the ones there if I accept they will crash the holder in the simulation. My actual holder in the lathe is not. A good thing it's not the other way around.

Upgrade to the recent LCNC was tried, but my touch screen would not work. Maybe I should try an upgrade in the same Ubuntu version I have. But are there a way back if things does not work?