Electrical Issue!!

[dak70]

Greetings!
I am a newbie to this home CNC gig. I am a CAD Designer who got tired of printing pictures of designs and decided to make tangible products for fun and a little extra $ for my time.
Any way...I have a 30x48 Ez-Router runing running Mach 3. There are two issues.
1) I have the Control box on, the PC on. I get everything all set up and zero'd.....reach over to turn on the Dust Collector and the pc reboots, causing me to loose all my settings. All three machines are on dedicated 20amp circuits. They are on the same bank of the main electrical panel.....could that be causing the voltage drop?

2) When I get it all back up and running, I frequently get a "E-Stop" Requested" that stops the cycle, I click reset, start spindle and start the cycle.......a minute later it stops again. There are not any unusual gcode lines at that stopping point.....could it be the electrical?

Thanks for any help or thoughts! itried to post question #2 at artsoft, but the server is on the blink....must be electrical

Regards,
dak70 (Dennis)

[Torchhead]

As for the E-stop issue: Open MACH and find the "Input Debounce" settings. In recent versions it's in General Config. Increase it to about 2000 and see if the problem goes away with the E-stop. The higher the number the higher the noise immunity on the inputs including any limit or e-stop. If you think it might be a limit input causing it you could try disableing the limits in MACH temporarily. Lines used exclusively for homes typically will not cause a noise related e-stop but the limits will.

As for the PC resetting with the turn on of the Shop VAC. It's most likey a spike from the vac causing the reset. With the computer disconnected from the EZ-Router controller does it do the same thing? (Can you cause a reset of the computer with the vac?) If so you need to either find a way to soft start the vac ot get enougn filtering into the lines to stop the reset.

The Vac may also be causing a static spark. Does it do it instantly on turn on, or after the motor has spun up to speed? If it's static discharge you need to ground the vac hoses.


The chassis in the control box is bonded to Safety Ground. If you are running the PC on a separate AC circuit try running both the PC and the Table Control box from the same spot. Leave the Vac on it's own circuit.

Finally you may want to establish a local ground (rod in the dirt) and physically ground the table, and the chassis of the VAC to that one rod.


Hunting and killing ground loops and noise is not my definition of fun!

TOM CAUDLE
www.candcnc.com

[dak70]

Torchhead,

Thanks for your suggestions. I tried turning on the DC with the serial cable removed from the PC.....No reboot! As soon as I reconnected the pc....REBOOT!
I have a grounding wire attached to the dustcollector housing, wraps around the hose and is screwed to the spindle/dust boot alumiminum bracket. One thought has been to convert the dust collector motor to 240V (8amps) versus the 120V (16amps) it currently draws.
I will definitely pursue the exterior grounding rod. I have this set up in the basement, so popping some wires thru a hole won't be a big deal.

Thanks again!
Denis