Is there any chance this has something to do with a recent update to Carbide Motion? I’ve been running my 3XXL for several years without connection issues, and after updating CM to the most recent version (but not changing anything about my physical setup), I’m now getting regular disconnects in the middle of cuts. I haven’t had time to dig into it, but I thought it was interesting that other people seem to be having similar issues too.
I don’t think so — if it were, I’d think the support queue would reflect that.
Usually when this arises after a period of successful usage it’s the brushes.
My problem sounds like a different issue. I have sent an email to support which is looking into it. But I can not connect to Motion 635 Beta. I have two Dell laptops and neither one connects. Throughs an error when I click Connect. Reload ver 622 and everything works. True of both laptops. Granted they are to old and don’t have the required hardware for Windows 11 to be installed. Something is different with the new Beta versions.
This has been my concern as well with updating versions of the software. I have an older version of Carbide Motion and have seen too many people talk about issues on newer versions. I have a top grade laptop with more then enough power to support the software, but to have to stop and deal with updating the software and then have issues to have to go back and reinstall a previous version is a headache in itself. I already spend enough time on other things that I need to address and deal with. I don’t need to spend time on other things that shouldn’t be an issue.
This kind of having to deal with something like this is the same as trying to fix a vehicle and thinking you know what the issue is and buying a brand new part and replacing it. Then still having the issue and thinking that it must be something else because I just put in a new part on the one part. Then testing and more testing and process of elimination to only find out the very part you just replaced was also bad and now have to remove, take back, get a new one and reinstall it again. Been there and done that a few times before. Ended up costing me a lot of money on parts that weren’t bad because I was chasing to only find that the new part was bad as well.
For example, my truck started charging funny. I tested the battery and they told me it was bad. I replaced it, $100 part. Then my alternator supposedly went out. I replaced that. Then a few days after replacing it the truck began charging funny again. Started researching some and checking other things because I had a new battery and alternator. Replaced a couple other things and tested every ground. Still didn’t fix the problem. Took off the alternator and took it in to have tested and it was bad. All of that money and replacement parts for a bad new alternator. Ended up spending $350 on parts for an issue that was all coming from the alternator alone.
I purchased my Shapeoko XXL Pro about six weeks ago. When I received it, I followed the instructions and set it up. Of course, there were a couple of calls to Tech Support in the process. Once they assured me everything was fine with the machine, I watched all the How-To videos and created a simple job with one tool path. That is when the wheels came off. I did everything as instructed, I set the zero to the lower left and clicked Run. The machine did exactly what I expected it to do until it didn’t.
The job started running (no dust collection on this one), and about twenty seconds into it, the spindle stopped responding. I received an error notice that said, “GRBL Can Not Be Found On This Machine.” It would not respond to anything after that. I had to shut everything down and then turn it back on before I could reinitialize and go through the whole thing again. After calling Carbide Tech Support several times, they sent me a new board. I thought this was the answer to all my trouble, so I replaced the board exactly as they told me to and tried it again.
The result was only slightly better after installing the new board and running another job (again, without dust collection). Rather than stopping after roughly twenty seconds, it now goes almost thirty seconds before it quits responding. As you can imagine, I am more than slightly pissed. What are the chances of two boards being bad? Not very good?
So I thought about it and decided it was probably the computer I was using because all the cables were new, and there was no tension on anything that could pull them from the machine or the computer. I figured that maybe there wasn’t enough memory in the little computer I had mounted to it, so I changed it to a larger one. It has an Intel Core i5 -6500 T CPU @ 2.5 GHz and 16GB RAM and is running Win 10 Pro. I thought it would be fine, but I got the same result, and now I can’t get Carbide Tech Support to answer any of my phone calls. I am about done with this Carbide Create Pro 7 program. Does anyone have any alternatives I can use or suggestions on how to fix this $3K paperweight?
Sean, when I bought my 3XXL a few years ago, I was experiencing a random issue where the machine would stop and disconnect. The support team sent me a new board, but the new board did not resolve the issue. I talked the support team into sending me a new power brick (the only thing left to replace). Replacing the power brick worked. I doubt that your issue is the computer. It may be a bad USB cable.
If you are looking to replace CC Pro, then I would suggest Vectric VCarve.
Got it working. Support suggested I disable the Blue Tooth control on the PC. Did that and it started working. Neither of the two laptops I have can be updated to Windows 11 due to not having the correct hardware.
So there must be something in the new beta software that doesn’t like the fact that Blue Tooth is running on my old windows 10 laptop.
I am currently running the latest beta version of motion on an old win 10 laptop, using both a bluetooth trackball, and xbox controller with no connection issues.
What do you mean here?
I just had a disconnect last night flattening a slab, first time ever.
The brushes wearing down will increase the amount of EMI which a brushed motor puts out.
See:
Oh gotcha on the router itself, i’ve got a brand new 2.2kw spindle so that isn’t the issue.
Probably just a fluke, but never had it happen before.
Thank you for the information. I found some videos that Shapeoko posted a while back on how to ground the machine if you experienced interference. They say that when static electricity builds up in the machine it could cause it to disconnect from Carbide Motion. Seems unlikely, but it couldn’t hurt to try it. Although, if this was really a problem, you would think that the manufacturing team would have figured it out long ago. At any rate, I figure I will take the chance of doing a lot of work for little reward by running ground wires while I wait to be contacted by Tech Support. It can’t hurt and at least I am working on the machine.
It has been three days now since I first tried to contact Carbide Tech support and so far all I get back is an email stating that they received my request and I am in the queue, please send photos or videos showing my reported issues (been there, done that. Not doing it again). Now, it is a holiday weekend, so I doubt they will ever call. But if they do happen to call, I will suggest in no uncertain terms that they send me a new power brick. However, if neither grounding the machine or replacing the power brick works, I don’t know where to go from there.
Each time you contact support that changes your position in the queue to the bottom/most recent contact.
However, we sent you an e-mail around noon (Eastern time) noting that we have put on our schedule to ring you 5 PM Eastern.
Just saw a post.
robgrzRob Grzesek (Carbide 3D)Regular
No, we’re not moving to Bluetooth at this point. Support has noticed that some PC’s with serial port troubles can be fixed by disabling bluetooth.
Dell, in particular, seems to have more driver trouble than any other manufacturer. We’ve spent weeks on problems that turned out to be bad drivers from Dell. (We had an early Shapeoko user that worked for Dell, and he mentioned that they frequently ship outdated drivers.)
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fwiw Carbide Motion 635 Beta was running fine on Windows Surface Pro 7 until Windows update this week. Then when starting the app it would freeze up for 20-30 seconds. Task manager CPU/disk io was normal. When I could finally hit “initialize machine” the app would hang again, machine would do it’s twitch after 15 sec, then CM popped up a connection error. Disabling bluetooth fixed the problem. I used to run a 12 year old Lenovo laptop that CM was rock solid on, but would give disconnect problems when Windows update was downloading in the background. 622 was the last version that laptop could run, the betas since seem too much for it. Anyway, data for anyone interested. Thanks!
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