Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

I've looked for a way to do this, and not finding one I (naturally) assume there isn't one -- which may be wrong.

We work in an area with thunderstorms EVERY afternoon during the summer. Although we can reasonably adequately protect minor electronics like computers and their ilk, we cannot effectively provide UPS support for large motors on mills.

We stay on a site displaying local radar all the time, so we can see weather coming.

Right now, we stop, wait out the storm, re-do the CAM, re-create all the g-code, and re-start that way. It's a big pain, and sometimes our techs will accidentally save those changes in the source files; which we don't want to happen.

So... is there a way to pause a job that's actually running, set a "resume point", and shut down for the duration of a lightning storm?

If not, is that a reasonable feature to add?

Thanks,
Lloyd

So... is there a way to pause a job that's actually running, set a "resume point", and shut down for the duration of a lightning storm?

Yes. Just press Cycle Cancel (or, if you prefer, Tool Check followed by ESC a couple times).

F10/Shut Down -> F2/Power Off.

When you later start it back up, after it is done homing, choose F4/Run -> F1/Resume.

Scott,
I'm a long time responding to this, although it's been of great help. We've been running the conversion about 35 hours a week without many incidents, most of which were user-caused. (I'll post elsewhere about one problem that recurs fairly frequently).

There's one issue with Resume that is troubling; not really a _problem_, just worrisome. With the richness of your configuration facilities, I figure there's probably a way around it...

Depending upon the exact instant at which the Cancel or Tool Check is invoked, when resume is pressed, the spindle may make a rapid plunge back to the work.

Usually, that's safe, but not always -- sometimes something other than the program memory has changed between the time you do a cancel and a resume. In every case it's scary, making one want to ride the feed rate knob until you're sure it's going where it ought... <G>

So... is there a way to configure a resume so that the first plunge will be nice and slow?

Lloyd