Yet another random disconnect topic

CNC Machines Shapeoko 4
1

Shapeoko Pro XXL.

Zero disconnects during the summer. Frequent random disconnects with all sorts of different messages each time. Sometimes no message at all.

Getting pretty frustrating as I am trying to use it as constant as possible each evening.

Over the weekend I ran through the grounding tutorial and had high hopes as I saw my resistance readings change significantly once grounded on all rails, hose, etc…To no avail. Happened again within the hour.

Dust collection on/off, doesn’t matter.

Powered on its own circuit.

I understand humidity is low this time of year in MN, but is that the likely cause of all of this?

Heated garage, with portable humidifier.

Answers or suggestions are great, but I posted to mainly vent some frustration.

2

Frustrating for sure. While static can be the cause if you have grounded the machine you should be ok. Check the USB connection to your computer. Even a slight bit of play in that connection can cause disconnects as well.

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3

Do you have a humidity sensor? I had most of my static disconnects in the winter in my shed until I got the humidifier and got the humidity above 50%.

If you look at a psychometric chart, you will see that heating up dry cold air makes the air incredibly dry, and the humidity definitely reduces the ability of static electricity to build up.

But I completely understand the frustration of your machine cutting away and suddenly it just stops. And most likely what you were cutting is ruined.

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4

I used a product “Corrosion Block” on all my connectors on the 5 Pro. This includes the banana plug to the ground block, all of the pin connectors, pin connectors that go into the C3D black controller and the 65mm VFD. I also used this on both ends of the USB cable from computer to the C3D controller. I have no disconnects as of yet and I live in central Fl where the humidity swings are large and frequent.

Machine is in the garage but it’s not air conditioned until I open the overhead garage door and the breeze picks up. :zipper_mouth_face:

I’m not saying this is the final fix for other folks but just stating the as-found results so far with my process.

5

Try a different USB cable? Power supply? Laptop?

After being able to discount static discharge effects, you basically have to verify all the electronic/electrical parts & connections.

The last part to consider as faulty would be the SO4 controller as you mentioned that it worked for you all summer.

On my particular setup, for which I have a RPi5 & touchscreen to run CM, I will get random disconnects while running a CNC job if I have a network connection open from my design computer to the RPi5 - such as a File Explorer window open to the Rpi5 shared folder. I have no idea why. Pretty sure it never acted like this a year or so ago. But somehow the wifi network connection interferes with the USB connection.

6

If there is a microscopic layer of oxidation in connections sometimes swapping cable out will work until the oxidation creeps in again. Sometimes a cleaner is needed to remove this and restore the connection.

7

My SP5 is set up in my basement. Everything runs off the same circuit via extension cords including the shop vac hooked through the mullet collection system. Nothing has extra grounding. All my disconnection issues stopped when I bought a new computer with more than enough RAM. I don’t know your setup, its just my own experience. Hope it works out for you.

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8

You did not specify which router/spindle you are using. If you have a Makita/C3D router replace your brushes. When the brushes get about half used the wire inside the spring is rather short and you start getting noise from the brushes and that can cause disconnects even if properly grounded.

On my SO3 the original controller had a loose USB connector. I eventually replaced the controller for the upgrade to the Bitrunner. However to fix my USB loose connection I placed an adhesive wire tie on the side of the rail and put a wire tie to keep the strain off the USB cable. Worked well.

adhesive_cable_mount_black_1_2
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9

I don’t think you have totally eliminated grounding and static issues just because you see some “significant resistance changes”. I did some grounding work initially, saw some resistance change but it made no difference. It was only when I went to the extreme on my link below that I ended my disconnects. I could certainly be wrong though about your situation.

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10

I recently resolved (at least seemingly so for now) with a lot of help from Support a similar issue of frequent disconnects, so I’ll share some of the relevant things I tried.

I’ve always struggled with occasional disconnects, but I’m in arid AZ, where static isn’t necessarily king, the heat is, but static definitely ranks up there somewhere around court jester.

Long-story-short, my issue appears to have been related to new dust collection tubing and the amount of slack (sharp turns) near the Sweepy boot. This was the last thing I changed that made a difference, but I like to reassure myself that all the other things I did contributed to the outcome. I’ll leave out all the dust collection steps as it sounds like your issue may be unrelated.

Try running an air cut with a project that has given you issues. Set zero above stock height, and/or removed stock and run two tests; one with the spindle on and one with it off. See if you have a disconnect with either. This should let you know if the spindle is the issue, because interference from it could cause your disconnect.

Support recommendations included (in no particular order):

  1. Install new brushes in spindle (Makita router)
  2. Ensure using surge protection with EMI suppression (not just a power strip)
  3. Use the 6’ USB cable provided by C3D
  4. Connect computer to USB galvanic isolator
  5. Connect computer to powered USB hub
  6. Add toroid ring to spindle power cable if it doesn’t have one
  7. Ensure spindle power cord is not in contact with the USB cable

I also sank a 8’ grounding rod outside the garage where my workshop is and ran 8-gauge copper wire along the wall where all the CNC equipment is and grounded everything. I’m leaving out several other things I’ve done because they are likely more relevant to my setup, but I’m happy to go on if interested.

This was really frustrating to resolve and took a lot more time than I wanted to spend on it, but didn’t really have a choice.

Good luck!

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11

I’m in MN too. I had some frequent disconnects over the winter with my SO4. I noticed my vacuum power cord was touching my USB cord and that was somehow causing my disconnects. Re-routed my USB cable away from router and shop vac cords and my issues went away. Something worth trying I guess?

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My problem with diagnosing it is that it is so intermittent and hard to replicate. The messages I just received “MACHINE CONTROLLER RESTARTED UNEXPECTEDLY AND MAY BE IN AN UNDEFINED STATE”.

  • Makita RT0701C router
  • Just replaced brushes and broke them in. The ones I took out were fairly new, but chipped really bad.
  • Connections are routed through a powered usb hub as of last night.
  • Hot glued the usb connection to make sure nothing was loose (goofy, I know)
  • Using the shielded cable that came with the machine.
  • Power cord is not in contact with the usb cable.
  • 10 runs without using dust collection. Couldn’t make it through a single 8 minute job.
  • Humidity sensor shows about 35% out here.
  • Never experienced a disconnect in the summer.
  • No projects completed lately. Spending too much time becoming an electrical engineer so I can figure this out.
  • If anyone knows of a solid diagram for how they’ve eliminated their problem, down to a third grade level, that would be fantastic.

Very frustrating not being able to use this in the winter.

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35% HUMIDITY is low. The combination of moving bit and wood chips are a perfect storm for disconnects. There are a lot of posts about grounding everything here on the forum. Maybe you need more grounding. Depending on the age of your wiring are you sure you have a real ground. Likely if your wiring is 30 years or newer it is likely grounded but you have to verify that. Some people have gotten an optical interface hub for their usb connection.

Not suggesting this particular device but something similar.

https://www.amazon.com/DEVMO-USB-ADUM3160-Isolation-Protection/dp/B09L4QJM14/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=1VJY0CGYAIXE8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DElmqhJEYQKpEw3gRXWljLTKxTJPJqWcQS7QUqIgk8i5H5tzOjyMfJN1wk624dwWO5OjAe-dnABkYg5wrj_hMCj7jMKMcDXmIhNWMToGHb16PlDL-E4y3t1m0ZnkyOHBrTmV75AsIhzc_1syHUBl6iqZMb5y8kPMGrzFp52kJHCrBpOO9CLzZS9B6xwotwgjlXHugU43RIs18G120eojyNrrq27Q7lDp-y85qKu5oX8.Y3SQ7-I8CVPFLs4j7mcX0kEQlyQUIX17RKiF7JwY2I4&dib_tag=se&keywords=optical+isolation+usb+hub&qid=1742675370&sprefix=optical+isolation+usb+hub%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

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14

Is the machine grounded on all the rails & router mount?
Static discharges are the most common issue causing controller disconnect - even without running dust collection.

Could be the USB cable if you haven’t tried changing that out with a verified good cable. And connecting the USB cable directly to the system running CarbideMotion - eliminate any other points of failure between.

If the problem persists after that, then the controller board may be going bad.

15

I agree that 35% is pretty low. I have an enclosed cabinet and I put a humidifier in there just to test things out. I brought it up to about 90% and then pulled the humidifier out. Ran a job and the humidity stayed at a constant 65%. Still crashed.

I built the house in 2013, wiring should be fine.

Up until last week, I had a Fusion5 tablet connected to the machine running Motion. I replaced that with a Mele Micro PC last week. I also grounded all the rails, etc… last week.

Machine is grounded on all rails and the router mount.

I am starting to think that I have inadvertently made the problem worse somehow.

16

You mentioned the relatively new brushes in the Marita were chipped pretty badly. Maybe explore that a little more and see if the contact point is damaged, dirty or if there is something in there making contact that shouldn’t.

If you run a project without turning on the spindle will it complete?

17

I had issues until i got a usb isolator. That resolved all issues for me. I dont ground my dust hose, or rails. I plug both devices in the same power outlet.

18

For what it’s worth, here’s where I am at.

I wired a dedicated 20A circuit into my panel today.

I also revamped my grounding wiring on the Shapeoko. I connected individual wires from the left rail, right rail, side of the gantry, back of the Z mount, dust hose (center wire), and router base on the Z mount. Brought all of these back to a bus bar. The bus bar has a 14 ga solid wire that connects to the second outlet on the dedicated circuit with an earth connection outlet (3 prong plug-in, hot and common are plastic, ground has a banana plug).

On the CNC cabinet I have to following connected to switched outlets, that are all plugged into the dedicated 20A.

  • Lights
  • CNC (Shapeoko)
  • Router
  • CPU (connects to a power strip that powers the CPU, powered USB hub and a Ring camera in the cabinet).

I ran my first test on a 16 minute cut, with no dust collection. No problems.

I ran my second test on the same 16 minute cut, but I added dust collection to the mix. I normally run a Bosch dust collector through a cyclone setup for my collection, but I really wanted to test it.

I have a really old Ridgid, 4.5 HP shop vac that generates enough static electricity to send Marty back to 1985. Plugged that in for the full 16 minutes without incident.

All of this was with the garage door opened, after a little snow/rain mix. Humidity was reading pretty high (over 80%).

I closed everything and ran my heater, ceiling fan and air filtration to really dry it out and heat it up. Ran several more 16 min jobs without incident.

I did run one aggressive job to put it to the test. Put my “Beast” bit in and went 0.375" Depth per pass at 100 in/min., with the time machine shop vac going, into solid maple. This caused a problem and a disconnect error. It was struggling pretty hard so I am not surprised.

That said, I am running back at about 35% humidity without incident now. I have my doubts but seems ok so far.

19

Sounds like you’ve got it well grounded now - that should alleviate the majority of your disconnect problems.
Other times I’ve experienced a random disconnect was when running my SPROXXL hard(by accident) with my cabinet LED lights turned up near full brightness. This put the load on the SPRO’s PSU too high as the stepper motors were demanding more power - I run my LED cabinet lights off the same 24V PSU - which possibly caused the PSU overload protection to kick it off briefly & reset the controller. I’ve been thinking about getting a higher wattage 24V PSU.

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