I have struggled with the “Cutter not Responding” issues with my several month old machine. I haven grounded my dust collection hose and made sure with a multimeter that all parts of the machine are now grounded to my main electrical panel. I run my router and Dewalt dust collection system on a different house circuit. I bought a USB Isolator on Amazon to go between my MacBook and the USB cable. I think my last problem involved losing the connection on an X axis cable from movement and vibration of the machine. I carefully tied down all the cables now with tie wraps so there is no absolutely movement of any of the cables during cutting. So far, this all seemed to help me. My conclusion is that these machines are great when they are working well but they can be kind a little finicky.
If you get disconnects of any type then it’s always worth running an air job without any dust collection to see if that’s the problem. It’s almost always dust collection, it’s just a matter of trying to see how to deal with it.
It may be that the most common problem is static from dust collection but so far my 2 breakdowns have not been from this. I have though tried on my own to reduce the likelihood of this problem with grounding solutions that I learned on my own from these forums.
Then the question begs, if dust collection is almost always the problem, why aren’t there clear and well stated directions for new buyers to prevent this issue since everyone that buys these machines will be using dust collection. There is nothing in my owner’s manual addressing this at all and no option to buy a properly ground hose, etc… You will only learn about this the hard way???
The issue is grounding.
I have a new building I built myself and being an electrician, I wired ALL the outlets with proper grounds and ALL the ckts that my CNC parts and pieces are connected to are properly grounded.
I have run my system with little issue of connectivity for almost 3 years now BUT having started to newly run acrylic, I have been plagued with loss of connectivity between CM and the 3xxl electronics. This continued for the last 2 months while I denied the possibility of a grounding problem since I knew all the wiring and ckts were individually grounded AND checked out as grounded properly.
Finally, with my vanity in hand, I took the advice of a friend and ran bare copper wire from the dust collector hose to a grounding block; then a bare copper wire from the dust collector motor to the same grounding block; also a bare copper wire from the X axis and Y axis each to the same grounding block. Then, with a separate wire, shieled in it jacketing, I ran that wire to a three prong connector and connected ONLY the grounding blade and then plugged that into it’s own ckt.
Since doing that, and while it looks ugly, I have not had any disconnected communications between CM and the CNC machine while running the last 3 weeks and over 15 projects of 1" thick acrylic.
Wish I had done this before. Maybe my head is getting less thick, but probably just wishful thinking.
Try the above and I hope it works for you.
The static electricity can find & build up on any parts which have no direct electrical path to ground - this was especially problematic on the SO3 line with the V-wheels & belts providing electrical isolation between gantry parts & the control boards didn’t have extensive isolation circuitry.
A long time ago I did as you have with bare copper wire around my vac hose(only going up 10" from the dust boot I think) & a dedicated grounding conductor going to the frame/Y rails/X rail & onto the body housing of my trim router. Think I also put a megaohm resistor in there so I wouldn’t ever get a direct short from the router to ground - in case the internal wires of the motor ever broke away & contacted the metal body housing. The static charge gets drained away just fine. Never had a problem with random disconnects on my SO3XXL afterwards.
Acrylic and similar high dielectric plastics are a particular problem for static, they are so good at insulating and storing charge they are actually used to make capacitors. This charge buildup is also why the acrylic chips stick to themselves and everything else so well.
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