Confused about tfree#, tpost#, tpre#

[TheDragonLord]

Good afternoon, after hours of trials I give up....I'm trying, with no success at all, to use the above mentioned files to handle the tool change.

Particullary my goal is to place the nozzles (Chimera +) in a given position, retract and cool down the "old" tool, re-heat and extrude (for priming) the "new" tool and go back to the print.

I use Ideamaker and with this slicer is possible to handle the cool down - re-heat of the tools.

Could someone help me giving some examples on how to use the mentioned files (or some alternative method) to achieve my goal?

Thanks!
Andrea

[rjenkinsgb]

tpre is the routine to load that tool; in mine, I move the head somewhere to the middle (away from the tool storage), move to in line with the required tool, move close to that (all fairly fast) then finally move more slowly in to the pickup position, clamp it and move out clear of the other parked tools.

tfree is similar but to put that tool away, a similar sequence but unclamping rather than clamping.

tpost is run after tpre and can be used to set the appropriate heat for that tool.

My examples for tool 0 below; that's with an E3D toolchange system mounted to a modified TronXY X5SA Pro frame.

tpre0.g
tpost0.g
tfree0.g

[TheDragonLord]

@rjenkinsgb what's driving me crazy is that I'm not able to make the M116 to work...the file goes on without waiting... should M116 be the first comand? I've tried M104 and M109 as well but they don't work either...
this is my file, as you can see I've tried M116 and M104 and M109 but the execution don't stop for waiting in any case

; tpost0.g
; called after tool 0 has been selected
;
; generated by RepRapFirmware Configuration Tool v3.3.5 on Sun Oct 31 2021 16:50:48 GMT+0100 (Ora standard dell’Europa centrale)
; Wait for set temperatures to be reached
if global.isActuallyPrinting==true
        echo "global.tool0ActiveTemperature=",global.tool0ActiveTemperature
	M104 T0 {global.tool0ActiveTemperature}
	M109 T0 {global.tool0ActiveTemperature}
	M116 P0
	G1 E10 F10000
	G1 E10 F230; prime nozzle
	G4 S2
	M98 P"Print_gcodes/nozzle_wiping.g" ; first wiping
	G4 S2
	M98 P"Print_gcodes/nozzle_wiping.g" ; second wiping
	G1 E-3 F10000

[T3P3Tony]

@thedragonlord said in Confused about tfree#, tpost#, tpre#:

I use Ideamaker and with this slicer is possible to handle the cool down - re-heat of the tools.

It may be interfering with the tool change gcodes if there is code in the sliced files that are doing part of what you want, so for now try just sending T1, T0 etc to switch tools, without using the sliced files until you are happy that the tool change gcodes work

@thedragonlord said in Confused about tfree#, tpost#, tpre#:

if global.isActuallyPrinting==true

Try your files without the complications of the conditionals first to remove the possibility that things are being skipped because the conditional is not true.

@thedragonlord said in Confused about tfree#, tpost#, tpre#:

M104 T0 {global.tool0ActiveTemperature}
M109 T0 {global.tool0ActiveTemperature}
M116 P0

Do those commands do what you expect when you run them in a normal macro without anything else?

[rjenkinsgb]

@thedragonlord said in Confused about tfree#, tpost#, tpre#:

what's driving me crazy is that I'm not able to make the M116 to work...the file goes on without waiting...

Mine waits for the heater, but my file does not have all the other stuff in it.

Try just M116 without anything else around it, as T3P3Tony says.

I suspect things like the if global.isActuallyPrinting==true line will always fail at a time like a toolchange, as it is not literally printing (extruding or moving to a new extrude position) at that instant.