He..eeelp! Me lathe won't go! Orac

Hi,

This is about the Orac CNC lathe again. At 9.45pm this evening a friend
and I, bearing in mind we're 17 and neither of us are Arnie, began to move
320lbs of lathe + controller out of the back of our car. Getting it to the
floor was a struggle even with gravity helping. Wheeling her into the garage
was tricky. Lifting it onto the table was another matter, especially when my
friend decided he was unable to lift the lathe and let me do it. I'm not
kidding you guys, I practically shouted every curse under the Sun and have
cut my palms lifting it. Dedication for you eh? :)

Now my friend leaves not being into machinery. I plug her in... whiiiiiirl,
the controller is on. I have a drink. I begin to randomly poke buttons until
I reach the manual override screen. From here I turn on the spindle and spin
it up and down to 2000rpm. Works great, it's VFD controlled with a tach on
the spindle. I poke around some more until I finally have the steppers
sweetly humming away pushing the carridge around.

I push the carridge down towards the spindle and under it (No toolpost on it
yet). The carridge touches the end X limit switch and beeps. I then push the
carridge towards the back of the lathe. Problems begin, I think the carridge
ran agaisnt the last limit switch. The lathe stopped. The lathe is now not
moving in manual mode. In manual mode I have three things I can access, they
are: X= Y= and the transverse speeds. As is I can alter these but the
steppers do not move the machine in the real world.

Pressing 'start' or 'manual' on the section label manual mode on the keypad
does nothing. Pressing stop takes it back to the main menu if it's in
manual.

When I start the machine it goes into it's main menu where I see: Load
program from disk, store program to disc, send to computer, recieve from
computer, enter program, edit program and execute program. Entering programs
appears as a line of numbers with no letters, it does not tell me what axis
these numbers relate to or anything like that. I am guessing that now the
machine is on it's limit switches it will not allow me to move?

There are no options to return to home on the menu. The spindle refuses to
start, I've checked all the obvious things like the emergency stop button
and pressing reset takes me to manual mode. Pressing emergency stop makes no
braker sound I am also guessing because the switches have cut the motors
off. Pressing reset produces a clunk sound, pressing start spindle makes a
clicking sound from inside but the spindle does not start.

The question... is this because it's on the limit switches? It was still
moving when I had it on just one of them. If it is, how do I budge the
sucker off them? If it's not... what the heck is holding it up?

Thanks for your help with this,
John H.