New User here: gSender - Is is possible to halt a long job and restart it the next day?

gSender ❓ Question
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Hello, I am a new user and have just started to look at gSender as my motion controller of choice. I am interested in being able to halt jobs temporarily and have the job continue from the place the code was stopped… possibly one or two days later. I suppose I am looking for a way of taking a snapshot of a paused operation and then reinstating it later. This is with the proviso that a job can be stopped during the run phase. Any all answers will be greatly appreciated

I have owned and run a standard sized Shapeoko S3 for around 20 months. I have used Carbide Create and Carbide Motion. I dropped Create in favour of Carveco so I could machine parts in 3D and I have tried to find a good alternative to Carbide Motion. It looks like gSender may be the right piece of software to use as my motion controller of choice.

I like the really clean user interface and there are a number of settings to explore. Happily, my machined homed and jogged correctly as soon as I loaded the software. I hope that this next week, I can spend testing the software and trying to fit it for my general purposes. I engrave glass, slate and ceramics, with a low powered 4.2W diode laser from J Tech. I use Lightburn software to drive that and it has performed faultlessly. I have cut soft wood, hardwood 3D motifs and aluminium. The hardest aluminium I have cut was 20mm thick and graded as T6 6061 T651. I routinely cut 6mm thick aluminium of the same hardness, using DLC coated, carbide 0 flute cutters designed to machine aluminium.

My machine has had three modifications. I changed the belt tensioning set up for something that permits me to tension all three belts accurately in about one minute. I changed the MDF baseboard for a 12mm thick aluminium sea of 840 threaded M6 holes and this has contributed greatly to the general rigidity of the machine. In conjunction with the baseboard, I use two pairs of modular vices (often together) which are indexable and very rigid and can extend to the full length of width of the baseboard.

EDIT: Spelling and grammar corrections

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Press Pause. Walk away and come back tomorrow.

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Thank you. I was more interested in temporarily halting the G code execution and being able to run the job from that point at a later time.

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Make a note of the line you pause it on and then you can use the “Start from line” feature. Click the top right corner of the “Start Job” button.

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Brilliant! Perfect answer and a feature worth its weight in gold. Thank you! :slightly_smiling_face: :+1:

EDIT: to add another question… Can the machine be switched off or does this operation require the stepper motors to remain energised?

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You can turn it off but you will lose your XYZ zero so after you pause the job and make a note of the line it is on, you will want to return the router to XYZ zero before turning it off. Then when you restart the job and turn the machine on, make sure you zero XYZ before moving the router again. After that, you are good to go with the start from line feature.

I should have mentioned that in my prior post so I’m glad you asked before doing it.

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Great information. Thank you! I expected to lose my XYZ zero so that wont be an issue. I use Carbide motion which retains the XYZ position but as soon as it is switched off, there is no way to run from the paused position. I think it is because the log file is not enabled by default and enabling it just makes the log zip passed the console window at high speed.

I tend to use the machine coordinates as well because the relative workpiece coordinates are not helpful as they can differ by quite a lot, depending on what work has been done before the piece for renewed machining.

Guess how many errors I made before I understood that point! :rofl: