Is a print "Pause" effectively infinite?

Bambu Lab P1 Series
1

I have a model that I would like to print, but it will take 24hrs to complete.
For noise reasons, I would like to manually pause the print overnight.
I realise that I can set the nozzle temperature to zero (if it doesn’t do it automatically) and will have to leave the bed heated overnight.
Is there anything that might interrupt the pause and cause the print to be cancelled? Such as a firmware imposed timeout? Or is the pause essentially infinite?

2

Generally, the pause is as long as you want.

But as you mentioned noise reason - the printer will still be noise as at least the MB fan is still running) and not really silent during the pause.

3

Thanks for that.
(Personally, I find that the motor noise penetrates through my walls far more than the fan noise.)

4

I’ve definitely had a repeatable problem with longterm pauses actually restarting. Specifically, overnight seems to not work reliably.

5

For PLA prints I regularly pause long prints for many hours, and have a few times successfully powered down the printer during pauses.

The key to the process I use though is to use the Cool Plate with BL liquid glue for long prints that I might want to pause - this avoids the need to keep the bed heater on slow cooking the print.

I mostly press pause while a colour change is taking place, then once the printer has started to lower the nozzle temp down to 90 I manually set the target temp down to 35 using the screen on the printer,

Once the temp hits 46 or 48 the fans turn off (if you paused during a colour change).

I also manually turn off the light too.

You can power the printer down for several days at this stage for an infinite pause- but I usually don’t as the printer is pretty quiet once paused - to only way you can tell it is on is due to the extruder BL logo light staying on.

Then to restart I just set the temp back up to 220, turn the light back on, then once 220 has been reached I then hit resume.

Have done this process 20+ times successfully,

If you pause a single colour print there is more risk of the print messing up - but I haven’t had any issues. I do find though that you have to manually turn off and on the fans with a non colour change pause.

More background info here Splitting long prints into multiple sessions - using Pause

3 Likes
6

Thank you, that’s really useful information.