Say you have a single-nozzle 3D printer but would still like to print some multicolor objects, or maybe you want to insert an object inside your 3D print. You could change your whole printing setup and get a multicolor 3D printer, upgrade your setup with a splicing machine, or adjust some settings in your slicer.
UltiMaker Cura is one of the most widely used slicers in 3D printing, with lots of amazing built-in features that enhance the 3D printing experience. One such feature is “Pause at height”, which, as its name suggests, lets you pause your ongoing 3D print at the desired height. The primary reason you might use this feature is to do multicolor printing, since it enables you to swap out your filament midway through a print.
Of course, there are other reasons as well, so let’s take a look at how to use the pause feature in Cura as well as explore other methods of pausing your print midway.
Before getting started, it’s worth noting that the feature doesn’t work with all printer firmware, and its compatibility may also be dependent on the version of Cura you’ve got installed as well as the version of your machine’s firmware. For example, users have encountered issues with Creality’s firmware and RepRap firmware.
In Cura’s latest version (5.4 at time of writing), compatible options appear to be Marlin, Griffin, BQ, RepRap, and Repetier with OctoPrint. If the printer doesn’t recognize the G-code commands, it will either ignore the steps or it may do something completely unexpected, so it’s always good to keep an eye on your machine as it’s working or maybe do a small test print to check that there’s compatibility all around.
In any case, the pause at height feature in Cura is hidden in the user interface of the slicer, since it’s actually a post-processing plug-in. It can be used before slicing your model, but the more effective way is to use it once you’re sure about your primary slicing settings.
The steps to enable this feature are as follows:
Once selected, you’re presented with a range of settings that you need to set to use this feature.
While there are various settings that you can alter, the following ones will help you entirely control the pausing of your print:
Part of the fun is discovering the settings that suit your personal needs the best, especially as different filaments, like PLA, PETG, ABS, and TPU, have different optimal settings.
Note that, if you’re using layer number (rather than height), you need to select the number of the layer coming before where you want the pause to occur. In other words, the pause will happen at the end of the selected layer number.
Regardless, it’s always a good idea to do a test run with a small “dummy” print to ensure that your settings are working exactly as you want them to. This is also useful to practice the act of switching filaments if you’re wanting to use the pause to do multicolor printing; you’ll want to be confident in your ability to make the swap without moving anything around (e.g. the gantry), as your printer won’t do any position correction when it resumes printing.
On a related note, some have found that printers don’t properly advance to the next layer after resuming. If that’s the case, you may have to further fiddle with settings or adjust the raw G-code.
Cura offers one of the easiest ways to pause printing midway, but it’s not the only one!
First of all, if you’re using a printer that uses Marlin firmware, there is a “Change Filament” option in the “Tune” menu. Additionally, there’s also an option to pause the print entirely. These two perform the same function of pausing a print midway, though their execution differs slightly:
Apart from using Cura and Marlin, the next best thing is to play around with G-code, but this is a more in-depth option.
As you can see, there are several ways to pause prints, whether to switch colors or embed objects inside your models. Whichever option you choose, don’t expect it to work perfectly right away. And again, it’s always a good idea to do at least one practice round.
License: The text of "Cura: Pause at Height – Simply Explained" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.