Pause a print

Ok while I wait for my email I’ve been going down to the university by my house to play with their laser cutters. One feature I have found really helpful was a pause on the cut/engrave. Once started I can pause to open the lid and get a closer look to make sure my settings are exactly where I need them to be. Will my GF have this option?

5 Likes

Yes but not a ‘button’ - you just open the lid and it stops. Theoretically when you close the lid it should resume where it left off but I haven’t tried this yet.

4 Likes

I believe pausing a print and then resuming is in the hopper. It has been a much requested feature. Pausing to cool down and resume is coming soon.

Right now opening the lid cancels the print completely.

15 Likes

At this point in time if you lift the lid it cancels the run. Pausing on lid lift is in the hopper.

8 Likes

Jinxs!

5 Likes

This is correct.

4 Likes

ah. this answers my question. probably should have checked here before “testing” the pause/resume (non)feature. everything is learning, so no biggie. lesson learned.

2 Likes

@dan … any progress on this feature (or have I just missed a post)?

:glowforge::proofgrade::sunglasses:

Nothing to announce yet…

Acting on old information in the forum here I discovered that there is no “pause”, there is only “open lid and ruin your material and have to start over”, which on a 2 hour job is far beyond reasonable…

this is an essential feature, please implement, vote +1

2 Likes

Really? I honestly can’t think of a reason to pause a job outside of some emergency situation. Totally curious… what’s your use case?

To answer the door, or a call of nature, while lasering something likely to ignite such as cardboard.

3 Likes

Ah. Good answer. :slight_smile:

Solutions:

  1. “No. I don’t want to save money on my electric bill. Go away.”
  2. Plan accordingly.
    :wink:
2 Likes

Around here it’s more likely JHs or Comcast.

1 Like

Good reasons to pause
#1- Not being able to attend/watch the GF during a 3hr job. Nature calls, knock on door, ect…

#2- Intermittent power outage, brown out or internet disconnect. (or software glitch)
^ [this one is costly, ruins materials]

#3- Running test engraves/etches with different material and wanting to swap out pieces by simply pressing pause/resume

#4- EASILY, effectively and efficiently lining up the front and back of a board for double sided etches without having to make a jig by pressing pause, simply flipping a perfectly measured board, and pressing resume. [the all hallowed “press a button - go”]

#5- testing high power engrave, clearly seeing that the material is in danger of being ruined, wanting to SAVE the material but RESUME the job with a different setting and not have to edit the vectors, picking up right where the job left off.

All of which came up Day #1 for me.

#6- feeling concerned that the GF is heating up, been running too long, or noticing an issue which a job pause/resume could easily fix such as a physical material nudge.
^ (has not happened yet, but something I thought about during 1-5 above)

To elaborate-
in #5 above I was cutting a calibration/power test board with several setting variations, I tested a grid of 36 power/speed variations on 36 imported vectors (which took a long time to get into the online software, had to import each one, one at a time). When I reached a setting that was clearly in danger of burning the wood I stopped the GF, but wanted to continue onto the next “row”. I could not effectively do so without messing around with the source file again and turning off 30 vector layers, one at a time.

Calibration/testing (pauses really come in handy with these)

2 Likes

Sure.

Not sure that’d be possible… it’d involve NVRAM that I don’t think it on board. Maybe it is though. But otherwise, the job would need to be re-sent (a new job).

Interesting.

Okay. I see it, but it’s not for me. I think I’d prefer to see front and back as different jobs. But, hey… that’s me. :slight_smile:

I submit that different settings is kind of the definition of a new job. Not talking about the source file… just the settings. In your burning example, you would NOT have to touch the source. You’d simply adjust the settings accordingly and send the new job.

The Glowforge will automatically pause in that case.

All said and done, I do believe they plan on implementing a resume feature. No clue when though.

Hello, I’m glad I found this thread because I thought my glowforge’s button wasnt working right when it didnt pause. I just got mine last weekend and was testing it out. I’ve used a cheap chinese laser cutter/engraver, and the “Universal” branded one before and both had a pause button so I thought surely glowforge would have one too!

I hope this feature comes sooner rather than later. In the past when I was using other lasers, the blue tape I was using to hold down my material had come unstuck and the material was lifting off the bed, so a simple pause would be great so I can just re-secure it.

But yea, I cant imagine if someone rang the doorbell while I’m cutting some sensitive material like paper and I can’t pause.

4 Likes

I’ll throw my hat in the ring for a “pause” feature.

From an implementation standpoint, I think you can just build on the existing behavior. Open the lid and have the laser do exactly what it does today. Just popup a UI element on the app that gives you two big buttons, “cancel current job” and “resume current job”.

This is meet all the needs I can think of while building off of default behaviors within the machine.

3 Likes