Random USB connection loss. Power spikes

Interested to know if others have had problems with power spikes causing connection loss to the XCarve. Thought at first it was operator error until I finally noticed the computer was randomly loosing connection. Finally tracked my problems down to power spikes. About 20% of the time when I turn on or off either my Dewalt DWP611 or my Dust collector the USB will disconnect… I’m in the process of trying to find where the spike is entering the system. On the power line itself, or signal coupling at the computer, XController, USB cable, any of the dozen or so shielded cables. The weird part is that it has just started after five months of use. Now I don’t expect any solutions from the forum, but this type of thing could easily be the cause of why some XCarves have randomly halted in the middle of a carve. You could be carving along nicely and if a compressor spikes the power the connection is momentarily lost. This one is going to be fun to track down.

Since the arduino is not being powered by the same supply, maybe the problem is from the PC side? Have you tested the same thing but only using a laptop powered by batteries?

Yeah, thanks. Still happens with the PC on battery. I also moved the XController and PC onto a separate circuit from the Dewalt with some serious power conditioning. The brushes aren’t worn. Everything including limit switches is properly shielded. (That’s what I do for a living). Changed the USB cable to the XController. Going to grab another PC but doubt that’s the problem

We use Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) on all of our PC & machines.

Ok. There is a chance that I have isolated it to a specific USB port on my laptop. Might just be a poor connection but that seems unlikely because wiggling the cable doesn’t cause a problem. Tried another laptop and could not get it to happen after 20 on/off cycles of the dust collector and Dewalt. Tried another USB port and couldn’t get a fail after 20 on off cycles . Tried it on the original USB and it failed on the 10th on/off cycle. Statistically I may still have a problem but only time will tell.

Do you have the pickup hose to your dust collector grounded (static discharge may be the problem)?

No I don’t, but that wasn’t the problem because it also happened with just the Dewalt on/off and everything else off and disconnected. I’m up to about an 80% confidence that it was the USB port. Tried on/off cycles another 25 times on a second USB port and couldn’t get it to fail. On the original port it just failed twice with 8 cycles.

Air conditioner running? Don’t know, just a thought.

Thanks. It’s pretty easy to cause by just turning the Dewalt on/off. But I think I isolated it to a specific USB port on my laptop. Tried two laptops and two different USB on the suspect computer. Could only get it to happen on one port. But I’ll need another 100 attempts to be sure.

Thanks. Didn’t have it on a UPS but did have both computer and XCarve on a line conditioner with much better specs than those that come with typical consumer UPS. Funny thing is a lot of my job is Electromagnetic Inteference/ Electromagnetic Compatibility testing for the DoD. Can’t really borrow the test equipment without going to jail so I’m stuck with a binary search for the problem. (BTW: just now put it on a UPS since thunderstorm season is here.)

I had trouble with this. Switched to a powered USB hub and problems stopped.

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I went online ordered a new usb hub for my xcontroller , and solved stop issues with my xcarve.

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