Hi Gerry,

Thanks , I am a total novice in this field and trying to learn so please excuse me if I am asking dumb questions .

What if the tool change is asking for the same tool , how does it ignore that and keep cutting until a different tool is required .

As the " Tool Change Macro " Download does not appear to have any code I have had to print screen from the tutorial into paint and print the code which I am now manually typing into Note , and then try to modify to suit .

What I am trying to do is :

M6 Tool Change request ... Ignore if same tool ... Go to change position if tool New Tool is needed at safe height .... Then Do Manual Change and Re - Zero tool " .... enter new tool number  is stored either manually or changed to the tool requested number when cycle start is hit ...( If tool 0 is entered to ignore tool change) not really sure on that one .

I have same question - why Mach3 tries to change tool when required tool is already installed?

I know I can disable M6 at the beginning of job, but I dont want to do that. Is it possible to configure mach to change tool at the begin of job when it is needed only? At moment there are pretty useless movements before job can start. Also my CAD program (Aspire) cant know which tool may be used, so it will add that codeline just in case.

In your CAM program you can assign the tool number for every tool that you use.
In Mach3 EVERY M6 Tx will do a tool change routine even if the desired tool is loaded in your spindle.
A little of "useless" movements will not hurt you much, time wise.

It seems that people are too spoiled. When we had computers running DOS, from floppies, on 8086 processor, all was fine, nowadays, AMD Threadripper with ultrafast SSD is "slow"

It seems that people are too spoiled. When we had computers running DOS, from floppies, on 8086 processor, all was fine, nowadays, AMD Threadripper with ultrafast SSD is "slow"

ZASto is so spoiled. When my grandmom was young, she delivered letters around country with horses and everybody was happy. Nowadays ppl are not happy when getting so many emails.

Its not very big deal, I can skip any movements when tool is already loaded, just hitting cycle start twice. I personally think it is a bit strange why not to skip it. But it is ok.

Does same thing happen when using auto tool changer? CNC drops tool and reloads it?

You should then change M6start macro, through which you can skip all unnecessary movements if loaded tool is the same as commanded tool.

You should then change M6start macro, through which you can skip all unnecessary movements if loaded tool is the same as commanded tool.

You have right.

Also I am looking for mach4 which skips tool change when it is not needed.

Ty for your answers, ZASto.

I found out that Mach3 dont try to change existing tool when using auto tool changer (instead of stop spindle option). So I am making script by this way.