I’ve been using my shapeoko for a few week now. Last time I cut and again today, I get random disconnects. I’m pretty sure they aren’t code related since that occur randomly. My guess is the dust collection and static. I am running a Festool vac, through a Home Dept dust topper to this hose. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L0FZOQ8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Since the hose is plastic, with a wire coil inside, which is also wrapped in plastic, grounding the coil most likely wouldn’t do anything. I’ve seen some people just run a bare wire through the hose and ground that. Does that method work?
Are there any other suggestions for keeping the machine alive during a cut?
As a side note, it seems that Carbide 3D didn’t plan this right. These machines are designed to be used in a work shop where they will be creating LOTS of sawdust. They also know that dust collection will be used with these machines. Knowing that, they should have made sure the controller and all the associated cables were well grounded and shielded to prevent static from impacting the machine.
If your hose has a wire coil inside, chances are it is specifically designed to evacuate static charges, so definitely try grounding that wire, I would not be surprised if it did wonders to get rid of those pesky disconnects.
I have collected a few other tips & tricks from the community here, that you could look at/try ?
Disconnects are not fun, but usually people succeed in getting rid of them permanently using one or a combination of these tricks. Sure, everyone would prefer if they didn’t exist at all and the machine was designed to be 100% immune to them, but in all fairness to Carbide 3D that is not easy to do considering the variety of user setups, multiple possible sources of EMI, and having to rely on standard/commercial grade electronics to keep the price low.
You will find many posts on EMI issues and disconnects here, which can also help.
I agree w/ @Julien — just connecting the ground for the dust hose should fix this problem — if it doesn’t, drop us a line at support@carbide3d.com and we’ll do our best to work through this with you.
I bought 2.5" flex hose, 4" flex hose and 6" flex hose from Amazon that has a steel coil running through it, and I peeled back the PVC on the ends of the wire and I use the grounding wire that came with my C3D probe to ground the hose. The other end of the ground wire is bonded to the extrusion that the controller is mounted to.
I plan on grounding the hose at the other end eventually, but for now, this works fine. I have had no disconnects since I started grounding the hose. One time I snagged the grounding wire and about a minute later it disconnected due to static, so I can say that the 30+ hours of grounded running without disconnects and the less than 5 minutes of not-grounded running leads me to believe that grounding should take care of your problem.
Also, the disconnects will get worse the colder it is outside. When you warm up cold air, the relative humidity goes down and higher static charges can build up. That may be why you did not have issues until now.
I recently bought a Shapeoko XL and the disconnect stories had me concerned, since I live in Arizona where the humidity is usually single-digit. I read all the tips and decided to start with the simplest idea, which to me was grounding the router body. I ran a wire from a screw in the dewalt router, zip-tied it to the power cord, and connected the other end to the outlet plate screw. I’ve had this from the day 1, and I’ve gone about 20 hours of run-time without a disconnect. Good Luck.
My worry about doing it thus is introducing a ground loop and/or not grounding the dust collection — since my dust hose is conductive I didn’t have an option on it.
The first time I get a disconnect (hopefully never), I’ll ground the dust hose. For those tackling disconnects, it seems prudent to make one change at time until you conquer it.
I live i n a humid environment (East Texas) so static is not likely for me. I have had trouble with the connector at the controller. I put a sticky back wire tie holder and put a little slack in the USB cable and secured with a wire tie. My connector seems loose and when I have any connection problems I start with checking the cable at the controller. If you live in a dry environment static can do the disconnects and the routing of your router power cable can also cause issues. The router power cable should not be inside the drag chain. Run it on the outside and make sure you have enough slack at both extremes of travel to avoid binding the drag chain.
