Was playing around this morning, thought it would be useful to have Mach3 know what tool I am using even when there is no M6 in the file (single tool for the entire job)...played around with some things which did not work, then did some research on here and came up with the idea of duplicating the M6 start (gets the current tool number) and calling it M500.m1s...wasnt sure if it would work, but it did! First line in the GCode is M500 T1, which updates the Mach screen with current tool is tool 1. I have my tools in VCarve the same as Mach 3, so this worked pretty good.

Once I got it working, I was wondering if it was useful or not...What if the tool in the router was the wrong one! This doesnt help as it would merrily continue with the cut!...maybe more useful is to get the VCarve processor to put an M6 command in when there is only a single tool in the file....hmmmmm...making Mach3 do what you wnat is almost as much fun as making things with the router!

Leslie

As long as I a choose Mach3 ATC (automatic tool change) in VCarve, it does include an M6 command even for a single tool file! I solved a non problem! But had fun doing it! The cool part is I added to my own knowledge bank on how to make Mach3 do my bidding! What an awesome program!

Leslie

Excellent work Leslie - thanks for sharing the info.

Tweakie.