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Just to add my experience with Pausing a job using Easel.
Wait until a time when the bit has been raised and not touching the material being carved. Press Pause in Easel.
Now you can unplug power to the stepper motor drivers, ie. the main power, and turn off the spindle. As long as the Arduino board stays connected to the computer via USB lead, it remains powered and Easel does not know any different.
Do not try and start another Easel project as this will stuff it up. Hopefully it’s obvious, but the same Easel project window needs to stay open until the project is resumed and Do Not Move the XY or Z axis manually.
To resume, simply plug the power back in for the Stepper motors and turn the spindle back on and Press the play button in Easel.
I do this regularly and up to 12 hours paused at a time.
When you turn off the power to the stepper motors that allows them to move freely. If you leave power on they are locked in place (if the grbl parameter $1=255).
You did leave power on the Arduino, so as far as the software is concerned it knows the position where it paused, so it would start back up when the pause is removed.
Now here is an additional question, when you pause a project, during the time its paused can I adjust my cut settings (feed rate/Depth per cut)? The reason I ask is I have some material that is corrugated plastic with an 1/32" aluminum finish. If I run it at the pace I would run aluminum it would take forever but if I can up the cutting speed through the corrugated plastic it would save a lot of time and patience.
It depends on how your CAM program generates G-code.
I would suggest that you break your carve into two tool paths, one for the fast operation through the plastic and the second for the slower speed metal cutting.
