Did Tormach think we would never run more than 10k programs (start button pushes) on the lathe? It maxes out at 9999.
The counters can be reset individually. See here: M30/M99 Counter reset
I suspect the assumption is that users are unlikely to need to count beyond 9999 cycles. Outside of a swiss machine, I can’t imagine many scenarios where 10k+ cycles of a single program on a single machine is at all likely.
Also, bear in mind that the counters don’t know anything about start button presses, they are counting M30 and M99 blocks respectively. If you manually stop a program before it hits one of those blocks, the counter doesn’t increment (at least, that’s my understanding of how they work, I turned mine off years ago).
The good news is, despite what my uncle told my grandfather way back in the day about the family station wagon, the engine doesn’t just quit once the counter rolls over.
Thanks for that info. Current job running is 5K so this is helpful.