People who don’t have this problem don’t post about cuts going uninterrupted.
I had tons of static problems while cutting MDF until I followed the article that @WillAdams linked to. I have had zero problems with static since.
That said, I don’t know that it was an actual disconnect so much as it was the machine losing its mind. After a few hours of cutting MDF successfully, it just went off cutting in a fun new direction on a sheet that it had successfully cut twice before. No harm was done and I got to learn something. I used more four letter words at the time, though.
You guys just need to machine aluminum instead of wood. The little chips flying all over the place are pretty static-resistant… (my only excuse for this is that it is Friday… )
One data point I’d like to add to this topic: DON’T use a Dewalt StealthSonic shop vac for dust collection with your Shapeoko. I’m only a sample of one, which isn’t statistically significant, but I had endless disconnect problems that began the moment I switched to a StealthSonic vacuum, and ended the moment I stopped using it. In between those two moments I spent months searching for a solution and trying out more potential fixes than I would ever want to list here. ChatGPT opined that the StealthSonic’s brushless motor and/or its sound-muffling construction were causing electromagnetic interference that messed with the Shapeoko’s electronics.
I don’t own any Black and Decker stock, so I’ve got no dog in this fight, but we’ve been recommending that vacuum for a couple of years now to everyone who asks. We haven’t seen any correlation between that vacuum and extra trouble.
Obviously, I’m not saying it wasn’t a factor for you, though.
May be the vacuum, have the same one. Had those lost connections with wood once in a while. Some weeks ago I started cutting HDPE and epoxy: not even one session without stops. And I had a cyclone from “white plastic”, description said was antistatic therefore I did not try to fix that. Zeroing, grounding every metal piece, hoses did not help, until I touched the cyclone: sparks. Changed that to a “black” plastic one that was not declared antistatic, and no interruptions any more. Any piece in the dust removal path may be responsible for static buld up. The vacuum may be responsible, but still ground the hoses, I put a copper wire around the vacuum, grounded that.
I do not intend to intimidate you, I am not an engineer, and had to learn these things from old fashioned books: was worth it.
Zeoring is not grounding. One needs to ground the device. That means zero the machine somewhere to one point, without forming loops, so from point to point straight. From that device zero go to ground, real ground, I do not know how to test it, so I asked my electrician, he assured me that my round pin of the power plug indeed is real ground. That is not always necessarily the case! If what you assume is ground is not your device still may have some electric potential, what is not favorable.
Do not connect your wire directly to ground. If there is a static voltage that is a rather high one. In extremely short time that discharges through the wiring, and very high voltage changes in very short time induce a magnetic field what in turn can induce voltage in adjacent wires, like the ones in the mainboard. Therefore connect the wire always through a resistance (some MOhm) to ground.
GL!
(still the controller is a diva. Mimimi: electricity near me, I disconnect… But: more sophistication means more development, equals money. Sure it is too easy to blame the USB, why all our other USB-devices do not take naps in thunderstorms…)
No offense meant, but there’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo in your post (beyond what I quoted. ) If you have a receptacle where the ground pin isn’t grounded, then you have more problems than “static”. You should have hired your electrician to find that problem.
Anyway, since this thread has been “solved”, I’ll quit.
Agree! But as I said I learned from experience. We had a home in Berlin, built 1989, where grounding was connected to the fresh water pipe. Now the iron pipes in the street were exchanged to plastic ones by the city up into the house. And yes, that problem was bigger than just static. And that place was also where I learned about the fascinating effects of voltage induction. We had a lightning rod installed. Once a lightning struck exactly into that rod, was a really big bang and light late at night. The whole building was luckily unaffected, but the garage door control board was partially charcoaled. It was located appr. 5m from the path of the lightning rod into the ground. It was not hit directly, but destroyed by inducted voltage.
The Old Lady we live in now is built 1959. And there was no problem with grounding of the building. I just needed to be sure.
Interesting. I actually went through two StealthSonics (6-gallon) that both displayed the same problem. My first one died while it was under warrantee and I got a second one. The second one also died a few months later (both of them simply wouldn’t turn on), so maybe there was something wrong with the electronics of both of them.
)
) If you have a receptacle where the ground pin isn’t grounded, then you have more problems than “static”. You should have hired your electrician to find that problem.