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Hi All, my first time posting to the forums and short time user of the X-Carve.
My question is, would it be wise/safe/even work to ground the dust control Grounding Kit wire to one of the available grounding ports on the back of the X-Controller? In my case the section of ports that are not being used are the M7, M8 and Spindle etc
The suggested ways such as attaching to a power outlet face plate doesn’t work for me they are not grounded in my home (I live in NZ and this isn’t common I’m fairly sure), no cold water pipes in the room and I’m trying to find a way to do it that doesn’t involve opening/messing with other electronics to pair their grounding wires.
Not fully up on my electronics Steve, but if your electrical boxes aren’t grounded, then this won’t help you.
Those grounding points are connected to the ground on the power supply which is conected to the ground in the electrical cord which connects to your house ground at the socket.
If your house ground does not connect to your electrical, then it wn’t work. Maybe you could make a ground for your shop. Put in a grounding rod outside your shop and run a wire to it from your dust colletor, and any other static generating device.
I believe it would be best for you NOT to ground anything to the X-Controller. If you have a poor ground on your X-Controller it may be a problem. In any case, good ground or not, the electric discharge would have to go through your X-Controller and with that you may run the risk of frying your circuit cards. I would find a good ground in your shop and go from there.
Keep the grounds as far away from your X-Controller as possible is my suggestion.
The big thing is practice good working practices — no loops, everything which is grounded goes straight back to a common ground, anything which may generate static such as a dust hose is wired up in such a way that the static has a reasonable and safe path to ground which won’t make a loop.
Please get someone to help you install properly grounded AC outlets. The personal safety of yourself and others is compromised with un-grounded AC machinery use. Not worth the risk IMHO.
These are negative connections for accessories. You want to ground any grounding connections to an “earth ground”. Don’t run it through your electronics. I’m not sure if the ground terminal from your power supply is connected to the chassis of the X-Controller. It’s been a while since I built mine and no longer have/use it. But it would not be a problem connecting it then you could connect your “ground” wires directly to the chassis.
Thanks for all the input so far team! Much appreciated.
I should have been a bit clearer around what is grounded. They way most power outlets work in NZ are that the faceplates and boxes inside are all plastic, and the ground wire isn’t attach directly to either of them, but there are grounding cables wired into every power outlet, most electronics have three pin power plugs to utilise this.
What I’m just trying to avoid is taping onto the ground cable inside my wall outlet, to then have the cable somehow hanging out the side. (Trying to keep it clean)
Another idea I have is to wire the grounding kit cable to its own standard NZ power plug (only to the grounding pin of course) and plugging that straight into a wall outlet, the only ping doing anything will be the ground(earth) pin, I could even remove the other 2 pins all together to avoid any potential arcing as they would be in contact with live terminals. Ideally this would be plugged into a multi box rather than occupying its own wall plug, but as I’m understanding from the above, this is for static discharge and the most direct route to my homes grounding rod is the best path.
Plugging directly to the earth ground of the building is the best practice. Outlets in US work the same way. I also considered plugging directly to the ground with a plug. Ended up going to the chassis of my controller. The point I wanted to emphasize was that the negative plugs on the back of the controller are not grounds but are negatives for accessories. If you wanted to ground to your chassis you would just need to come off the ground/green wire of your power supply to the chassis.
Now I understand. I think this idea of the ground only plug, would work just fine. When I build my new shop, I intend to add a couple of grounding points to a couple of my outlets for this exact purpose. Right now, I have 3 vacuums that get used in my shop. With the dry cold winter air, static shocks are a regular occurrence.
