Manual tool change + tool lengh touch off

Thank you so much - this actually seems to have been the problem! T H U M B S U P

I was eager to do this, but while reconfiguring it, I guessed that it's designed to work for tool changes within one program; that is, it won't work as intended if M600 is called before the first, roughing, program and M6 is called in a second, separately loaded, finish program.

But it [was] only a guess [EDIT: and it was WRONG. Read on.]. Can you comment whether it's true or not? And if true, if an adjustment might be made to accommodate the different approach?

Thank you.

(I have to separate passes because the immensity of them put together is too much for the memory.)

It's designed to work with tool changes across many programs:

send M600 command
load first file which should contain 1 or more M6 commands.
run it.
load next file which may contain 0 or more M6 commands.
run it.
repeat loading next files and running them until job is complete.

unless you issue another M600 command to indicate start of job, all following files are considered to be part of the same job and may contain M6 commands.

@Orange Cat

Thank you. It is now transparent, even to this blockhead.

(And it is going to change my life...)

EDIT: It changed my life all right. :S It is Aug. 18. It was only two weeks ago that I got it working, preparatory to doing the first real job on a new machine. However, the rest of the preparations were equally intense, causing me to FORGET ALL ABOUT HAVING SET THIS UP! This is my Keystone-Kops account of chasing my tail trying to figure out WHY my machine seems possessed and acting on its own--moving to a location that's NOT EVEN IN MY CODE! :blush: Turns out transparency is a double-edged sword. (My memory's never been the same since watching Memento...)

@OrangeCat

I remember now that I was concerned that the spindle of the new machine has no vertical "stop" for cutters, unlike the router on the old machine, and wondered if that fact was a problem for your code.

I looked at (m6_)tool-change.ngc and believe that it is NOT memorizing Tool-length offsets for individual tools and recalling them later.

But I want to state my understanding:

If (m600_)tool-change-begin.ngc is called, the tool loaded with the very next M6 Tn command will be measured for reference, and successive tools--including the ORIGINAL tool from which the reference was calculated--will have offsets calculated for them, so that their tooltips will match precisely with that of reference.

And again:
If the tool used for reference is again called for and loaded by an M6 Tn, it need not be (re-)loaded at the perfect, reference position because an offset will be calculated to assure that its tip aligns with the reference position.

And finally:
That is to say, the tool used for reference will be treated like any other after its first-use.

Thank you.

If the tool used for reference is again called for and loaded by an M6 Tn, it need not be (re-)loaded at the perfect, reference position because an offset will be calculated to assure that its tip aligns with the reference position.

Yes, that is correct. My machine also doesn't allow the tools to be re-inserted at the same vertical position.