Pause Park Layer Shift Fix

Fixing Layer Shifts After Pause / Resume

If you pause a print and then resume it — for a filament change, to clear a blob, whatever — and the print comes back shifted sideways (everything above the pause line is offset in the Y direction, toward or away from the front of the bed), this page is for you. It's a known issue on the stock Ender-3 V3 KE configuration, it has a simple one-line fix, and it's not your printer being broken.

You don't need to be a programmer. If you can paste a couple of commands into a terminal, you can do this in about five minutes.

💡 Shortcut: the OpenKE installer can apply this for you — choose the Pause/Resume layer-shift fix option. It backs up gcode_macro.cfg first and only changes the stock y_park = 222. The manual steps below are the same edit, by hand.

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What you'll see

• A print pauses fine, resumes fine — but from the resume point on, the layers are shifted in Y.
• Often a faint clunk when the bed parks at pause time (the bed reaching the very back of its travel).
• It only happens after a pause/resume, never on an uninterrupted print. That's the giveaway.

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Why it happens

When the KE pauses, the PAUSE macro parks the bed so the nozzle isn't sitting on your part. On the stock config it parks at Y = 222 mm:

{% set y_park = 222 %}
...
G1 X{x_park} Y{y_park} F6000      ← fast move (100 mm/s) to the very back

Here's the problem, and it's a chain:

1. 222 is almost the end of the rail. The Y axis soft limit (position_max in printer.cfg) is 223. So 222 is just 1 mm short of the maximum — and the print area is only 220 mm, so 222 is already past where you'd ever print.
2. There is no endstop at the back. The KE's only Y endstop is at the front (the home position). The back of the axis is open — nothing physically tells the firmware "you've hit the wall."
3. position_max: 223 is optimistic. That soft limit is set a hair beyond the true mechanical travel. So commanding Y222 at full speed drives the bed into the end of the rail.
4. The motor skips steps (or the belt slips). Because nothing stopped the move, Klipper thinks it reached Y222, but the bed physically couldn't. Now Klipper's idea of "where Y is" and reality have drifted apart.
5. Resume returns to the wrong place. On resume the printer moves back to where it thinks the print was — which is now off by however many steps it lost. Everything from there on is shifted.

Lowering the park target by a couple of millimetres keeps the bed inside reliable travel, so it never crashes the rail and never loses position.

This is a firmware/config quirk, not a hardware fault. A printer that crashes the rail on every pause will eventually wear things, but the shift itself is purely the lost-steps math above.

What this guide was tested on

Printer	Creality Ender-3 V3 KE
Firmware	V1.1.0.17 (also present on 1.1.0.15)
Symptom	Y layer shift after pause → resume
Stock values	y_park = 222, stepper_y: position_max = 223
Interface	Mainsail (Fluidd works too)

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Before you start

• ⏱️ Time: about 5 minutes.
• 🧰 You need: the printer on your network and a computer. No tools, no disassembly.
• ⏸️ Do it between prints, not during one. The edit itself is harmless mid-print, but the restart at the end (FIRMWARE_RESTART) would abort a running print.
• ↩️ Reversible: you'll make a backup first, and the change is a single number.

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Connecting to your printer

Everything below is typed into your printer over SSH (a remote terminal). From your computer:

ssh root@<your-printer-ip>

Replace <your-printer-ip> with your printer's address (e.g. 192.168.0.231 — you can find it on the printer's WiFi screen). Use your printer's root password (it's shown on the printer). Windows users: download PuTTY and connect the same way.

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Step 1 — Back up the config

One line, so you can always roll back:

cp -a /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg \
      /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg.bak-ypark

Step 2 — Change the park position

You can do this two ways. Pick one.

Option A — the quick command (recommended)

This finds the y_park = 222 line and changes it to 220, automatically:

sed -i 's/{% set y_park = 222 %}/{% set y_park = 220 %}/' \
    /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg

Then confirm it took (you should see 220):

grep -n 'y_park = 22' /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg

Option B — edit by hand with vi

If you'd rather see it yourself:

vi /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg

• Press / , type y_park = 222 , press Enter to jump to the line (inside the [gcode_macro PAUSE] section).
• Press i to start editing, change 222 to 220.
• Press Esc, then type :wq and Enter to save and quit.

Either way you've changed this one line:

-    {% set y_park = 222 %}
+    {% set y_park = 220 %}

x_park (the X side) stays at 0 — the front/X side homes against a real endstop there and isn't part of this problem.

Prefer a value that adjusts itself? Instead of a hard-coded 220, you can use the self-adjusting form (it's already in the file as a commented-out example just above the line you edited):

{% set y_park = printer.toolhead.axis_maximum.y|float - 5.0 %}

On the KE that evaluates to 223 − 5 = 218, a touch more margin, and it tracks position_max automatically if you ever change it. 220 and 218 both work; 220 matches the most widely reported fix.

Step 3 — Restart Klipper

In the Klipper console (the input box in Mainsail/Fluidd), or over SSH, run:

FIRMWARE_RESTART

That's it. The next time you pause, the bed parks at 220 — comfortably inside its travel — and resume lands back on the print exactly where it left off.

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How to confirm it worked

Start any print, let it lay a few layers, then Pause from the screen or Mainsail. Watch the bed go to the back — it should stop smoothly with no clunk against the frame. Resume, and the next layers should line up perfectly with what was already printed. No sideways step.

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Undoing it

Restore the backup from Step 1 and restart:

cp -a /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg.bak-ypark \
      /usr/data/printer_data/config/gcode_macro.cfg

…then FIRMWARE_RESTART.

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After a firmware update

A Creality firmware update can overwrite gcode_macro.cfg and put y_park back to 222. If layer shifts on pause come back after an update, just redo Steps 1–3. Bookmark this page.

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Troubleshooting

• grep in Step 2 still shows 222 — the sed didn't match (maybe the spacing in your file differs). Use Option B and edit the line by hand.
• Still shifting after the fix — confirm Klipper actually restarted (Step 3) and that grep 'y_park' gcode_macro.cfg shows 220/218. If it does and you still shift, the lost steps may be happening elsewhere (e.g. printing too fast, loose Y belt, or a Z-hop/skirt issue) — that's a different problem from this one.
• Where did the clunk come from? That was the bed reaching the back rail end during the park. After the fix it shouldn't happen on pause anymore.
• Does this touch print quality or normal printing? No. It only changes where the bed sits while paused. Uninterrupted prints are completely unaffected.