I just got my Nomad 3 last week and did my first job which was a custom aluminum spanner for one of our company prototypes and the nomad worked well, on my second job which were small links in aluminum which were fixed to the bed using tape and glue, on one of them the glue let go and the link caused some binding, I was right there so hit the stop button and reset everything, put in a new piece of stock and tried again, now the spindle does not work, is this normal that one overload to the spindle damages the machine, we also have a Carvera and similar situations have happened ( we do very small aluminum parts and sometimes the tape and glue method is the simplest way to hold everything down) the Carvera has been working without a problem it recovers from a jam without causing any damage to its hardware, I have seen other posts where similar things have happened and machines loose there spindle. Is there something that can be done to avoid this (let’s face it parts can always come loose and I guess this happens to just about everyone)
Let us know about this at support@carbide3d.com and we’ll do our best to work through this with you as soon as we can — might need to wait until Monday morning for someone who is able to diagnose the current Nomad.
I have contacted support and will be waiting on them to see what is wrong. I will also check with them to see if this is something frequent hopefully not but will see
To add to this, I’ve had my Nomad 3 for almost 2.5 months and have had this happen three times now.
The first time support sent a new spindle board and I was happily making aluminum chips for a few weeks and then went to cut a new work holding board out of MDF and had another board die on me. Support sent a replacement control board and spindle board this time. After replacing those I went again to finish cutting the MDF board and had the same thing happen again.
Support has been good about sending replacement spindle boards; however, I’ve been having a pretty bad experience with long periods of radio silence when going back and forth with support (this has been my biggest frustration aside from the broken spindle boards). When the machine is working it’s really great (and exactly what I want). I’m hoping they can get to the bottom of what’s going wrong here.
I’ve been digging into this on my end as well hoping to get an idea of why this could be happening and everything I’m seeing suggests that there is a design flaw in the spindle board where it doesn’t protect against the spindle binding or otherwise encountering heavy load. Granted I’m very new to this, but it seems like if a tool starts getting dull you’d start to see it struggle more or bind in a situation where it successfully cut in the past. If the board can’t protect against this then I’m really not sure how to avoid the next replacement board from meeting the same fate.
Some relevant links I’ve come across that are relevant here.
- This post (on the this forum) talks about some of the problems encountered with the spindle driver board. Specifically saying “It’s fragile, with very little in the way of fault protection. We’ve got two fat TVS diodes, and that’s it. Stalling the motor seems to fry the board instantly a majority of the time.”
- In this reddit thread comment they talk about another experience with spindle boards dying.
- this other person seems to be encountering the same issue.
It really seems like there may be a deeper issue in the board design that needs to be addressed in a new version or something. For any Carbide folks that may see this, if there is a new version being worked on, I would love to be a guinea pig and test it out 
Hi Matt
I totally agree with you, this is why I added the post the way I did, I work for a US company and we design machines that use X,Y and Z servos along with allot of other steppers, I am in the R&D department and we have all sorts of protections in place, to protect the motors and electronics in case an axis binds, this is normal in just about any type of machine, we also have 2 other CNC’S one Carvera and another cheap $400 EVO 3020, they have both experienced this issue where a part becomes loose or in one case on the cheap one the EVO3020 crashed into the clamp, obviously my fault. The fact is they did not suffer any damage, from what I can see the Nomad is quite robust mechanically and as you mentioned works really well when it’s running. Unfortunately the machine is just as good as its weakest link. We all make mistakes and important is how we resolve the issue, if there is someone from Carbide reading these posts, please try and resolve this as soon as possible, we buy a machine to produce parts to make life easier not harder.
Let me link to my post as well. Brand new Nomad 3 under power condition?
I’m on my 4th spindle board and 2nd main board (machine was purchased in Dec 2023), this includes sending the machine back to the factory once, in which support could only tell me that they replaced the spindle board (3rd board). Doesn’t sound like any extensive tests were done.
Support has done a great job at responding, although sometimes it’s been a bit slow but they are probably understaffed like everyone else.
I agree that it does sound like the Spindle board is the weak link here and lacks the correct level of protection.
Chiming in here, currently waiting on my 3rd spindle board after having the last one die from binding to a loose chunk of aluminum while window machining a piece. Because of the way that the boards have been failing, I believe (like above) that there isn’t enough overcurrent protection in these boards such that when the motor/spindle stalls, the board components can’t handle the stall current, and magic smoke escapes.
Again, support has been great about getting these replacement boards out, but suffering a 1-2 week downtime while getting through support and waiting for the boards to arrive is definitely not optimal for folks using these machines for work. I ended up ordering a second spindle board out-of-pocket so that when it fails again, I can swap in the one in hand while engaging with support for a replacement board.
I think once my warranty runs out, I’m going to need to think about upgrading to a VFD spindle to get around this reliability issue.
Does anyone know if this driver burning out on stall is a new thing to the Nomad, wondering if the original 883 or even the shapeoko suffers from the same issue.
I really liked the machine when it was working but from what I have seen this is happening frequently to many users and just not sure if this issue is isolated to this model.
Shapokos are bring-your-own-spindle machines, so their driver circuitry is entirely dependent on which third-party spindle you pick.
As for older Nomads, this thread seems to show that 883 Pros had an older revision of the McGillicutty boards. However, since they had (relatively) underpowered 70W motors, it’s possible that the motor stall current was within spec for those board components and wouldn’t cause as much damage as the higher-specced motor in the Nomad 3 
Thanks for the great information.
I have read various posts saying that customer support is very good and responsive, my actual reality is quite the opposite, yes they got back to me after a few days, I sent them pictures and then we got an email saying that the replacement part would be shipped, up to this point all went OK (not great but acceptable) we then got another email on 02/26 that tracking label has been created, well it’s 03/05/2024 and package tracking still says it hasn’t been shipped. I have asked various times for an update in status and no reply at all, this to me is concerning as I still have to manufacture my parts on a machine this was supposed to replace and be much better, but fact is my $400 amazon Chinese machine is the one that actually needs to still back up our other CNC. Is Carbide 3D doing ok in our current market? Their social media presence indicates they are still active but the response from their team has been non existent in trying to help in getting the part shipped.
When requesting that we choose and back a made in the USA company our VP accepted the purchase and now he is really upset and wanting to send the machine back, this is a shame because when it’s working it is a great machine and would really benefit our R&D department we have various engineers working remote and a small desktop CNC is a fantastic tool especially for the multiple small parts we design.
When you Email multiple times, the ticket goes to the bottom of the Que. Not because of an issue with you, just the way it is. They work tickets as they get them. One person is not tasked to sort the Que.
It doesn’t help that they are world wide with calls from all over. I am not making excuses for them. I want this company to excel as I have one of their machines AND will purchase again.
Hands down, C3D is the best Customer Service in the World. Sometimes it hurts when we need it yesterday
I was able to get a call back from C3D today and it looks like USPS dropped the ball and lost the package, they are going to try and solve the issue which is great, I also really want to see them succeed and continue shining, we plan on getting more units probably a bigger working area so maybe the Shapeoko, I did not get allot of time to work with the machine due to the issue that happened which is unfortunate but this happens to all manufacturers, as I mentioned before, the machine is great works really well, sturdy and good precision it met all expectations!!! and yes you are right we do need it by yesterday, but all I needed was a response telling what’s happening so that I can adjust our work plan to account for this. Sorry if I came across as being unhappy with the product that is not the case.
So the board came in and the machine is now working and working well, got a few parts done and it’s really a good machine to work with!!!
To follow up on my prior post. Along with my most recent board replacement, a support person was kind enough to jump on a call to talk about how to reduce the chance of this happening again. It ended up coming down to choosing more conservative feeds and speeds and recommended a single flute end mill for aluminum.
Happy to say that I haven’t had a board need replacement since then.
Aside from the frustration of waiting for replacement boards to arrive, I’m pretty happy with the support I received. That said, I really hope they come out with a new iteration of the spindle board that’s a bit more resilient to this type of failure.