M2 stops moving in the middle of job

I’m still trying to get through the first project on my new M2. It seems to be calibrated and cutting fine, but then partway through a job, the sled just stops moving. If I look at the Makerverse software, it seems to think everything’s fine and shows an animation as though the router is still moving through the job. If I hit the pause button, the sled will then wake up and move. It goes to the point that the software thought I had paused the job - skipping the portion of the job where it stopped.

I thought that maybe the USB cable was the culprit since I’m using an extension cable, but when I removed the extension and used only the cable that came with the M2, the problem persisted.

I don’t think it’s a problem with the Gcode since I’m not seeing an error message and Makerverse thinks it’s still cutting.

Any ideas?

Turn off the USB power down/sleep feature in Windows and see if that helps.

I’m on a Mac. And the issue happens before the screen is sleeping. :person_shrugging:

Does it always stop at the same point, or is it a different spot each time?

It’s a different spot each time.

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That probably means it is some sort of a connection issue. Is this running from a laptop or from a desktop? Is the USB cable routed near any of the other wires?

It’s running from a laptop. I just tried another test - I used a different laptop altogether and made sure the USB cable wasn’t routed near any other wires. The same issue happened about 10 minutes into the project, except now I can’t seem to get the M2 moving at all! I can connect to the M2 controller, but I don’t hear the usual high-pitched whine from the motors when I connect. So Makerverse is connected to the control unit and will accept commands - when I tell it to move, it thinks it’s moving and the machine position numbers change, but absolutely nothing is happening on the machine.

So now the whole machine seems to be dead in the water. Perhaps I have a bad control unit? I tried connecting from two different laptops and even swapped out the USB cable to no avail.

Did the 12v power come loose?

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Haha yup, 12v power came loose. Nice catch - thanks @Orob !

It seems the last thing I can try to fix this middle of job stopping issue is trying a different USB cable. However, now I have a new problem: Makerverse thinks the M2’s position is ~250mm higher than it actually is. Is there a way to reset the position, or do I need to recalibrate?

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There should be an option to put the system back to the middle of the work area and reset the chains without requiring a recalibration. I don’t have that software right now and I forget the command in makerverse, but there is one. Do you have dead center marked?

I couldn’t figure out how to recenter it in Makerverse without going to the calibration. Updating the “height from top of sled to top of stock” number did the trick.

I finally was able to get my test project cut by using a 12" USB cable. It appears the long “high quality” cable that came with the M2 was the culprit. I’ll give it one more try to confirm later though.

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