Not sure if I'm doing this the right way, but it used to work for me and now (R2.47) it doesn't:

When a tool change occurs on my mill, I run the spindle up the z-axis to give me a bit of room, then change the tool and re-zero the z-axis by running the spindle down until the tool touches. Most times, I also jog the x- and y-axis to find a nice zero-level part of the job. Once that's done, I click the start cycle button and Mach3 moves to where it was when it stopped for the tool change, then carries on.

At least, it used to. What happens now is that the x- and y-axis are jogged way off to the right/back of where they should be. It seems as if Mach3 assumes we're starting from zero on all axis again. Indeed, if I click the move to zero button before continuing then everything is OK. Even if I then jog the z-axis upwards after the goto zero it still all ends up right.

So it seems to me that something is broken in this bit that wasn't before - Mach3 obviously knows where the axis are, but the start cycle overrides that and thinks wherever we are is zero. Hope that makes sense

Try going to the latest update V2.50 or later. (;-) TP

Ah, I though the latest was 2.48 - presumably you mean the development version? I'll give that a whirl, thanks

If you look at the videos, there is one about writing Macros - particularly for a tool change, using M6.

You can write your own macro to move the tool where you like and stop and start etc.

It may be that your macro is a bit fouled up.

I've completely neglected the macro so I'll have a peek at that, thanks. However, the same thing occurs at other time (that is, when not toolchanging but I need to move an axis for some reason then carry on from where it was). Mach3 used to cope fine without my having to explicitly move it to zero first, so if that isn't what it was meant to do I think I'd like it to be re-broken

HI dunkers,  there was a certain quirk that showed up around V2.42 that may be related to your position resetting. Try the developemental update before you worry too much. If that does not correct it please let us know.

(;-) TP

Sorry for the long delay on this, chaps - got sidetracked by non-mech earning-a-living stuff.

I just ran up R2.61, downloaded last night, and that's exactly the same - any X/Y jog during a tool change loses track of where the tool is and requires the X/Y axis re-zeroing.

I'm running off PCBs so don't have an absolute zero position. At the very start I zero at the lower left of the PCB, but this isn't critical (since the board will be routed as the final operation). I then have to drill the different sized holes and isolation route the tracks, and the tolerance is very fine.

As I originally posted, a previous version of Mach3 allowed one to jog away during a tool change and then would automatically go back to the position it stopped at for the tool change when you click the start button, but the last few versions just trundle off into hyperspace and bork my PCBs

Hey dunkers - thanks for this - you've nearly sent me crazy  I KNOW you're right because I used this feature without giving it a second thought. Now - as you say it's gone - (Been doing single tool jobs longer than I realized because I didn't notice it's passing till I saw your post). In fact I've just reloaded ALL the prrevious versions of Mach3 I have on file (back to 1.83 but missing some) and can't get it to repeat this feature. Maybe we're just imagining it - NOT  . - Difficult to know how we ever managed to do a toolchange without it.

Until our collective sanity returns you can use the "Remember/Return" buttons and do it manually. Alternatively you can add a degree of automation (nearly back to what used to be) by adding doOEMButton(286) (the remember button) to M6Start and doOEMButton(285) (the return button) to M6End. Slightly annoyingly it'll pop up the "Return" button dialog but that's about the best alternative I can find at the moment.

I normally used this as well.

I can't see how you'd do it any other way with manual tool changes, Like Stirling I've not done any multi tool jobs for a while, I'll check mine this weekend. If work doesn't get in the way AGAIN.

Steve

Thanks stirling - I thought I was going crazy for a while . Bit of a puzzle that regressing doesn't fix it, so maybe there's some setting that got changed during an upgrade.

What I've found as a work around, which does work but leads to tears because I keep forgetting a step, is to do the tool change and then hit the goto-Z button (it's important that the z-axis is set up exactly right before this step). Then lift the z-axis above the workpiece (because the next step is an x/y move without z clearance) and hit the run button. Mach trundles off to where the toolchange started, and carries on.