Pause without G code

Feature Requests
1

Is there a way to pause the system without having to go into the g code? I ignorantly hit the pause button 5 hours into a 6.5 hr job and almost fainted when I saw the screen say line 0 of 35,581. This seems so fundamental. What am I missing?

2

Push play and it turns to pause, then push pause and it resumes.

3

Wow thanks. If I had only known. Hope lots of newbie’s see this

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4

This brings up what would be a really good discussion in how to best interrupt a long running program by inserting a program run stop g-code into the program at a logical breaking point. Then you could power down the machine for hours/ days, etc. Power up machine return to work zero coordinates, move to the point in the program you stopped, and begin running from there. Anybody want to lay out the steps?

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5

Plus 1 for this. Can’t wait to get an answer to this. Going straight into my personal CNC handbook.

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6

Do you use a hand-held router or spindle/VFD?
There are ways to pause and resume without inserting G-code stops.

I have a spindle/VFD, but as far as I understand it, with a hand-held router you would only need to push pause on controller screen (not e-stop on screen or the physical red button on controller box), then turn off router. To resume you simply turn on router and then unpause on controller screen. I think people leave machine paused overnight for sure, but I don’t know about for days at a time.

With a spindle/VFD it’s a little more complicated because when you push pause on controller screen, there’s no (default) way to stop spindle rotation. You can …

  1. leave spindle rotating until you unpause.
  2. My Hitachi WJ200 VFD allows you to override the RS485 communication from the Onefinity controller temporarily and then I can stop spindle rotation on the VFD panel itself. More info here, with credit to @Alphonse and @Aiph5u : Hitachi VFD Connection - #29 by Aiph5u. I have that set up and it works great, but apparently not all VFDs allow that, especially some of the cheaper Asian models. You would need to look in your manual.

If you want to go the G-code route, I know some people have taken note of what line of the program they stopped at, opened the program file in something like Notepad, deleted the majority of the lines up to a few lines before the point at which they stopped, and then resumed the shortened program at a later time. (I haven’t done this, so the details, including maybe a couple of G-code lines you have to leave at the beginning, or the particular post-processor you are using, would have to be answered by other experts here. This link and others may help: Starting a cut on a specific g code line)

As far as inserting G-code stop and resume lines in your original, I also leave that to those who are more expert than I am. But it may not be necessary, depending on your set-up and needs.

Of course, if you move your material around and/or run other jobs before you resume in any of these cases, you’d have to have a way to reposition material and zero your axes accurately.

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