Pause layer, forced pause

[BaronPork (Ignas K)]

I was wondering if its possible to tell LB to pause after a layer, to be resumed after changing focus manually ?

I did find another thread but it was closed.

Why ? I want to try to “glaze” acryllic after engraving, which required to change focus. My focus is manual (electric motor).

Workflow: Engrave > Pause > Manually De-focus > Glaze (engrave same layer way out of focus) > Pause > Re-focus > Cut.

It would save just standing there to catch cutter on cue to pause and do manual de-re-focusing…

Just a thought.

Can Ruida controllers even support pause layer or command sent from PC (USB, Ethernet)?

[Blake (Blake Bartlett)]

Why don’t you do that step after the rest of the piece is done?

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

For clarity, when you say “My focus is manual (electric motor).”, are you saying your Z height is not programmatically controlled. If so and you need to adjust the focus manually, I don’t see the need for a “pause” in your workflow. I would look at this as 3 separate jobs.

1. Engrave (job completes)
2. Manually De-focus and run the same job again (job completes)
3. Re-focus then run Cut

Is there a reason you need to have these individual components delineated with a “pause” vs a full stop upon completion of each task?

[BaronPork (Ignas K)]

Yes, Z axis is not programmatically controlled.

When you put it that way maybe there is no need, but i like to program in all the steps before running. Old habit from pen plotters and cnc embroidery machines, i suppose.

[LightBurn (Oz)]

The Ruida controller has no way I’m aware of to insert a programmatic pause. It’s possible to have the controller dwell by firing a dot with zero power, but that would be a hack, and it requires a duration.

The simpler way would be to turn off the output for the layers you want done in the 2nd half, run the job, then toggle the output state of all the layers and run the job again. (right-click the “Output” column header to select / clear / toggle all).