Possible Static Issues

The vac itself can impact the charge quite a bit as well. It’s not stuff sitting around that’s the problem, it’s stuff moving around.

There’s a big chunk in the wiki about static. Your problem is 100% static related.

  1. Antistatic vac hoses help - but they can be expensive. “A piece of bare copper wire threaded through the hose” in my opinion better than nothing, but not by much. I wouldn’t start here.

  2. humidity helps. Try misting above the board with a sprayer. If you can keep the air and material damp, it will help. This is your best, short term bet with things you likely have lying around (a spray bottle and water).

  3. Power for vac, spindle, and electronics on different circuits can help

  4. High quality USB cable to compute (with ferrites) can help.

  5. A correct ferrite on the dewalt power cable (what’s on there is an anti-theft tag that LOOKS like a filter, but isn’t. If you don’t believe me open it.)

  6. Computer running on battery while sending code/everything running.

  7. BE SURE you run the spindle power not inside the cable track with the stepper cables. Preferably, run it at 90 degrees to a a hook behind the machine and a spring about mid-length to keep it from getting caught in the springenwerks at the router gets moved through it’s full extent. This keeps noise from the power out of the stepper wires and vice versa.

  8. Good practice, ground the makita to the mount - this takes a number of steps, This is not as cheap or easy as it first appears to do right to be. You need to replace the power cable to the router, properly ground that to the mount, and bet sure you have a good ground all the way back to the controller. This takes time, some reasonable solder and modification guts, and the right tools to make the change an measure electrical connectivity and resistance between two points.

  9. Easy, Good practice - open brushes aren’t helping matters any. Aa very fine mesh metal (easiest to find will be brass) screen clamped over the top of the router, then grounded to the mount. This will contain the rf noise from the brushes pretty well, but the mesh needs to be pretty fine, and can easily become an airflow problem if not kept clean of swarf. Almost makes a really convenient place to install a sock filter to help with brush wear due to debris. See other posts for directions on this filter/filter item. Dewalt brush wear - #6 by RichCournoyer A sock to keep metal from the filter from getting in the router, then a filter made from an unwound brass wool pad with a wire attached from it to ground, (better than a steel wool pad), then another sock as an outside filter for dirt.

The problem could be on the carbide controller, or it could be the connection to the computer - determining exactly which requires more detective work, but all of the above are targeting various things on both ends. There are more things you can do, but everything is a little more complexity.

And here’s the RTFF -
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