Once the bar lowers to a certain point, it'll wind up the reel. I've never pretaped it to the bar as that'll take up 4+ ft of material... If you're doing a ton of rolls a day and pressed on time, and want to just tape it up I can see that being useful... otherwise I do it manually.
You can pause it - Just open the window and it'll pause and stop. I usually keep it going... but until you're used to taping it up on the move I'd pause it. I usually have 3 pieces of tape sticking to the machine... One on each side and one in the mid, as it's moving I hold both ends taut... Once the printer finishes a pass and advances the media, it gives me enough time to tape both sides and the center up with plenty of time to spare.
Only once did I mess up and end up pushing the media up causing it to curl and cause a jam... My first week using the printer. Other than that it's fine!
And yes, pausing is also fine. I pause all the time and theres never any noticeable print defects. When you run out of ink mid print... the machine will pause and tell you to put a new cart in. 9 out of 10 times there wont be any defect for that even - And it gives something like 5-10 minutes before it'll cancel the print. I'm not sure how long you have by lifting the plexiglass... but it's safe to do so, so long as you dont go take a phonecall after lifting it and forget about it.
