Hi Forum (and Seth) The last two carves I’ve done, using a 1/8th roughing pass and a 60° V-Bit Detail pass. The detail pass gets stuck in one position and just keeps rocking back and forth. (excuse my terrible description).
The first time this happened (yesterday), it was only about 5 minutes into a 45 minute pass, so I just stopped the machine and restarted the detail pass, and it worked fine and finished the pass no problems.
The next time (today) it was almost finished the detail pass (40 minutes into the pass, 5 mins to go). so I stopped it, and didn’t restart, I thought I’d better ask for some advice from the experts.
Thankfully both of the carves were on some scrap timber test runs before I do the actual carve on a cypress pine slab for a sign, this weekend.
I don’t know whether it may be old laptop playing up, or if any of you have heard of this happening before and if so, how can I fix the issue and be sure it won’t happen again.
How old is your laptop? I had trouble in 2018 when I first started with my XCarve, it would run for a few minutes then stop. The USB drive on the old laptop wasn’t sufficient so I bought a new laptop and have been running good ever since. The laptop was 12 years old and came with windows Vista but I had upgraded to Windows 7.
From seeing similar problems over the years I would check the USB cable and make sure you have a good connection and check for any cracks in the wires.
Russell
Thanx Russell, I will check the cable, I should have thought of that first, the laptop is maybe 3 or 4 years old, running Windows 10
In addition to What Russell said you can open Device Manager mid carve (press ctrl+Shift+D or go to machine>General Settings>Device manager) and then you can see if Easel is still sending commands. IF it is still sending commands but the cnc is not moving than it’s likely the USB related as Russel was referring to.
If that is the case, you’ll also want to make sure to set USB selective Suspend to Disabled if that hasn’t been done already. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/support-software/How-to-Disable-USB-Selective-Suspend-1190/
Another common issue with older laptops is the 5V driver that sends 5V from the computer to the CNC Arduino Chip for all of the data transmission, that 5V driver might be under powering and an Externally powered USB hub can be used to ensure there’s a proper 5V at all times.
It would need it’s own separate power supply, like this one > https://amzn.to/3c9N7CG
Thanx Seth, I will check the USB suspend setting, and use a USB hub also, I’ve got a couple of them here.
If it does play up again I will definitely check to see if it is still sending commands, thank you for the info.
Just make sure its got the seperate power supply. A standard hub won’t boost the 5v the way a powered one will 