one suggestion, as a new Shapeoko owner who has learned lots of new things already…
now that I have a suck it dust boot, I am getting disconnects- assume caused by static, and I see there are tons of workaround involving copper wire and water pipes , capacitors on the control board, hacking up routers to add a 3 prong outlet, and so on and so on.
I dont even know what a capacitor is. (tomorrows homework, lol).
I love this machine and appreciate it 's quirks, but man, I want to cut some stuff. not research a billion ways around grounding issues (or, honestly what even grounding means to an electrical idiot like myself).
would love a quick intro/ overview/how to section to deal with this as well!
Bummer, EMI/static-related disconnects are no fun. I’m afraid there is no single magic trick to solve them, because there are many possible reasons for them to happen. So your best bet is to create a dedicated thread here on the forum, and describe your setup and how/when these disconnects happen, in excruciating details: I’m sure the good people here will then jump in to guide you through the investigation. Unless you have an ancient Shapeoko, forget about the controller and capacitors, there is 99% probability that this is not the issue, it’s been a few years now since boards were plagued with EMI weaknesses, it’s all fixed by now. Yet, other factors can still lead to this.
In the meantime, here’s the list of workarounds I have collected in the book for now:
try different wall sockets if possible
grounding the router body/mount (e.g. wrapping a copper wire around the router mount and connecting it to a known-good grounding point, on the machine itself or nearby)
earthing the machine frame
grounding the dust collection hose, and/or use an anti-static hose.
if the air is very dry, spray a little water on the stock, or use a humidifier in the room.
using a high-quality shielded USB cable, and/or a USB isolator or powered USB hub, or just using a different USB port on the PC running the G-code sender.
checking if router brushes are not worn out, and replace them.
using a voltage regulator/surge protector between mains and the machine
You can try those, in more or less this order, do ask if anything is too obscure.
Good luck, we’ll have your back
While this should be for another thread, I was plagued with EMI disconnects after I installed the DustBoot but I have reduced them to almost nothing using most of the things Julien mentioned but also, I also connected the Shopvac on a different electrical circuit, I ran a copper wire the length of the vacuum tube then I connected that wire to the Z limit switch plate above the router using a wire with alligator clips.
i’d also try with the vac removed just to confirm it is at fault. sometimes something basic gets altered and we assume it’s the new addition when it could be an unrelated loose cable,etc
There is no silver bullet fix for the disconnects and it can definitely be frustrating. Anecdotally, I started having disconnects out of the blue a while back. After trying a bunch of other forum suggestions, I tried wrapping some wire around the router mount and connected it to a nearby electrical conduit by wrapping it around it. Have not changed the setup and haven’t had a disconnect since.
Allright, it may not be as polished as I would like, but it’s been almost three months and more evenings than I care to admit, so here you go, version 1 of the e-book:
I would appreciate any and all comments (be it about grammar/English, inaccurate statements, ideas for improvements, …)
And if you are in the mood for a thorough proofreading, or would like to contribute a section, we can work something out (the gitbook inline comment feature would have been perfect, but the “reader+comment” permission just does not work)
Looking forward to hearing what you think, good or bad !
Wow Julien, this looks good. Is it possible to download the whole thing so I don’t have to read it on the computer? Yeah I’m old school but I like to have that stuff in my shop and it is easier and safer to use paper.
@WillAdams started sending me private messages with various corrections (thanks !), and I think this is a practical solution for me to collect comments for now, without making this thread super long. But whatever you prefer !
I’m still looking for an efficient way to generate a PDF, but gitbook does not yet support it.
BUT, I have synced the gitbook repository to a github repository: https://github.com/jheyman/shapeoko_a_to_z
You can go there and click “Clone or Download” button, to get a zip file of the full contents. Unfortunately this is all in Markdown format, so pretty unreadable in that format. There must be a way to generate the corresponding HTML directory structure, and zip that, I’ll look into it tomorrow.
EDIT: the legacy gitbook tools should work, just need some time to test. Until then I have changed it back to a private repo, it’s useless content anyway in this form.
I will be reading this a bit more and deeper in the next few days, but from what I have seen so far it looks like you did a great job and this will be a big help to new users and a great reference for even the seasoned user.
After a few very frustrating attempts at using various half-baked solutions to generate PDF from gitbook v2, I have a semi-working solution that generated one PDF per chapter. I zipped them and uploaded them here:
It does not look as nice as the online version, the page breaks are a little weird sometimes, but all the content is there for offline reading. I’ll keep searching for a better PDF generator solution.
Probably the best option would be a Markdown to LaTeX converter — if you can make a sample which shows all the Markdown you’re using I’d be glad to work up a LaTeX package which formats it nicely.
Considerations:
page size? (I’d suggest A4 wide x 11 inches tall — that way it works on either side of the pond)