Ok, Good. Gives me a little Hope. Hope this new router gets ya up and going good. The noise level is really the only reason I ordered Spindle. might be doing some night routing, but if all else fails> Sorry next-door neighbors, hahaa
Are you able to programmatically turn the spindle on/off? Mine just never stops running at 24k rpm. Tried pushing M5 through MDI with no luck. But admittedly Iâm new to Shapeoko and hobby CNCs in general so I may be doing something incorrectly to begin with.
Yep, the spindle will ramp up to 24k RPM and not shut off no matter the commands I send to it. I can go to the controller and manually turn it off, but not adjust the RPMs in any way.
Odd, and also if its bad batch of controllers or whatever, they should have batch numbers to Track these machines. Right? Some folks are getting or have gotten machines month ago and not having issues. Not sure how they do things. Just saying somehow before shipping they should be able to track bad production runs down to certain machines.
Guess what I am saying is, I think most folks would rather wait another week or 2 whatever for a fresh proven controller batch etc set up, versus having to put it together and be completely at the mercy of support. Because Obviously Carbide is Well aware of issues.
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I think at this point, they are becoming more and more aware of the issues.
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I have the same issue with the vfd that wouldnât shut down with the mdi code but customer service who are great ask me for pictures of the sticker on the controller they told me that the controller is probably bad they would send me a router since that are backed up with controllers
Maybe they will reinburse me on 80$ router I ordered yesterday after seeing all these spindle issues on forum. I have 2 emails. one says spindle kit shipped, other said today Router shipped, no news on actual pro 5 yet. Get it right fellas. I can wait a week or 2. < lol ( internal message to carbide)
Just as an FYI other than on-off and changing from RPM to Hz the controls on the VFD controller do nothing when it is working right, you can not change the RPM other than through code, the knob does nothing.
Yeah, I am aware they are locked down.
Received another VFD Controller 1.1 board today. There is no continuity between the black pin of the 6 connector molex input and chassis. Identical to the original controller board. If that is the definitive test for defect, then I received a 2nd bad board.
Only continuity to chassis is from the internal SK-W1 red lead connecting controller board to the larger VFD driver box.
The support resource didnât seem to have the details on continuity / voltage tests to confirm validity of my findings.
Brand new SO5 and VFD. Received notice replacement SO5 shipping today. Received the VFD replacement controller 1.1 today and by all appearances it is also crap (signs of repair / modification). Support doesnât respond (emails / phone calls). Feeling like I might have made a bad decision with this purchase.
I wouldnât mind a delayed response, as long as it was informed / straight forward. Support (Oscar) canât advise if a âgoodâ VFD should have continuity between black control control pin and chassis, so I have to assume I received a 2nd bad board. 
From what I am being told, they think it is an issue on the SO5 controller. I was going to call them today to see if those have come in stock yet.
Given the apparent incidence of issues and willingness to provide sub-components to end-users in an attempt to expedite repair, support should be equipped with basic troubleshooting and diagnostics to walk end-users through. As an engineer, I am more than happy to help expedite things - but their tier 1 support does not seem equipped / skilled to provide the necessary diagnostics to narrow down failures.
Based on my purview of community forums, I have ascertained certain facts (such as VFD ground-chassis continuity, SO5 black/white 5V on issuance of M3S24000), which may or not be accurate based on what I am being shipped. Support should have this data or be able to respond from engineering in a timely manner with same.
So it seems we are dealing with shotgun repair - keep sending parts and hope for the best. Thatâs just mad. Itâs got to be costing C3D far more than providing the guidance up front, implementing better QA, and managing expectations with end-users.
As it stands right now - unless / until evidenced otherwise, I have 2 failed VFD controllers and 1 failed SO5 controller, waiting on the 2nd.
The red lead for me on SK-W1 goes to VF1 inside of the VFD box which is the control signal pin and should not have low resistance to ground. The black wire on SK-W1 is ground and does have low resistance to chassis. I also have a 1.1 board but I still have the transistor occupying Q3âs spot instead of the having the base and collector shorted so there are some differences between my board and yours.
For me, my VFD box low power side gets grounded to chassis from this specific screw. I am not entirely sure if this was done on purpose or if somebody forgot to exclude ground pour next to the mounting screws.
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Thanks for the feedback. I just rechecked board and in both of my boards the epoxy coating has preventing the frame screws from establishing ground circuit. With a test probe I can see that ground is in fact under the epoxy⌠All PCB screw holes have ground under the epoxy when tested.
When I get the SO5 board (any dayâŚ), if things are still failing, I will consider swabbing some epoxy off to establish ground. Hopefully their engineers are reading thisâŚ
Incidentally, hereâs my before (with frame) and after boards in full contextâŚ
When I get the SO5 board I will report findingsâŚ
The more I look at this I am pretty sure it is actually a LDO occupying Q3âs spot on my board. Or at least that would make more sense with the way the traces are connected.
Do you get 5V between GND and MOSI on the 328p ICSP port of your SO5 controller when requesting 24K RPM? I am wondering if the optocoupler or the IO pin died. Not that it really matters much but if your MOSI pin still works then you could directly wire it to the VFD box to get back up and running and confirm that your SO5 controller most likely has a fried optocoupler.
This entire thing is being overly complicated for little to no reason. Carbide is adding all this garbage and introducing multiple point of failures that donât need to be there. And clearly they are failing.
Whatever engineer they hired right out of school needs to be replaced in my opinion. You shouldnât need a âspinderellaâ board to operate a simple pwm controlled motor from an Arduino control board.
They are literally going against the current of the spirit of why the Arduino platform was even created and itâs causing a lot of issues.
You know there is a problem when the âupgradeâ to these machines is to get rid of all the carbide Frankenstein electronics and go back to basics.