Test tool change strategy outside of program?

Hello, I am trying to configure the tool change process on my machine. I have both a tool length sensor as well as a Z-axis probe. Is there a way to test any/all of this without running a program? I guess I’d like to manually execute an M6 command and see what happens. I presume that gSender captures M6es from the program and re-writes them as bunch of other commands based on the strategy chosen in the config. Just typing M6 into the console doesn’t appear to do anything, but I guess the console is just sending directly to the controller, rather than to gSender’s internal interpreter?

It seems to me this would be a useful wizard in the “Tools” section of gSender to help configure a new machine that walks through all of the steps in an interactive way so we can confirm that things aren’t going to crash into the tool length sensor etc.

Thanks!

Does anyone know if/why I can’t just send M6T5 from the console and have the wizard pop up?

If I’m moving around and doing probing before I setup my job, I would like to then do my first tool change myself before running.

Invoking an M6Tx makes gSender show “Tool Change” in the status bar at the top, but no wizard pops up.

Tool changes work fine when running actual jobs.

EDIT: I thought maybe a macro might work but I tried it and it didn’t work.

Damn. I hope they add some way to call this manually.

That’s true, a setup wizard like that would probably be very cool to put together, I’ll note that down.

Regarding the use of M6 in the context of gSender’s built-in wizards, you’d be correct that the easiest way to dry-run it would just be to create a simple g-code file with some M6 commands in it then run it through. I’d also recommend you use either a broken old bit or just your spindle collet for touch-offs during testing if you don’t want to risk any damage to bits, materials, or tools

Thanks for the heads up @chrismakesstuff!

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I’ll make a small part with 2 or 3 tools, generate the g code and run an air cut. That way you can avoid stuff in case something doesn’t work

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