Z Zero merely a suggestion on occasion

on of the many reasons why my hand is hovered over the pause button whenever i start a job, just in case i messed up.

It happened to me the other day again. I noticed that right after a tool change, as the tool was coming back to front center from the bit setter, I closed the door & the hinge touched the motor mount. The doors, being solid plexiglass hold a lot of static. The X axis hesitated for a second. Then the first move in the path drilled about an inch into the stock before I could hit Pause.
So I reset my zero a couple inches above the stock & tried it again. Sure enough, the static discharge from the plexiglass zapped something. So, now I make sure I wait until the router moves back before shutting the door.

Static is a multi splendid thing until it happens to you. How many times have you laughed at someone that walked across a room and touched a door knob only to jump. Now that is funny unless it is you. This time of the year with the cold weather static is much more prevalent than in the summer unless you live in the dessert. Even down at the beach of it gets cold enough you can get static. It is best to adhere to the advise on the forum for grounding. When I worked at Sun/Oracle we had to wear antistatic wrist band and mats to prevent damage to $100,000.00 boards. We had to test them monthly and log that we tested them. There was some ISO standard that made us do that. Even with the wrist straps being tested a lot of them failed the test because they would have a broken wire. Dont discount the destructive power of static electricity.

Here is a question regarding the plexiglass and static. Can a ground wire be attached to dissipate the static?

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Not sure. I do wipe at least the front door down with dryer sheets & that helps with the chips & dust sticking to the plexiglass. Not sure if you could attach a single ground wire, or if you’d need a field of metal across the surface to dissipate static. When the hinge touched the motor mount it discharged, so that may work.
For now, it procedural. Don’t close the door on the machine head. And make sure you’re touching grounded metal when you vacuum out the enclosure. Got zapped a couple times that way too. :smiley:

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