My cnc starts cutting but then it gets disconnected from my computer, why?

it starts cutting fine then my laptop uses connection, sometimes keeps cutting sometimes stops, doesn’t have a vacuum running yet, is there any way to make it not disconnect, or make sure it continues if it disconnects, or should i just set it back up then restart the cut?

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is your laptop going to sleep? check your battery settings and make sure your timeout to sleep or hibernate or power save is set to never when plugged in.

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I also went into my browser settings and made sure the browser never let the maslow.local tab fall asleep. Its called ‘inactive tabs’ or ‘always keep these sites active’.
If its caused by blips in your home wifi, you can try to connect directly to the maslow and see if it runs ok without your home network in the loop.

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I’ve been watching it it doesn’t go dark and fall asleep and been staying on the tab but then it just disconnects?

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When you reconnect is there a green “Ready” over on the right side of the screen or a red “Alarm”?

Bar wrote:

When you reconnect is there a green “Ready” over on the right side of the
screen or a red “Alarm”?

If I’m not mixing up users, I think he is using groundcontrol on an early
maslow, not a M4

David Lang

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I’m pretty sure he has a Maslow 4 , there was someone else recently with a USB cable issue that was on an M2 so you aren’t wrong, but I don’t think that is @Caleb_Yager

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Shouldn’t it keep running if your computer disconnects from maslow.local?

Although I think I had this same problem and there was a setting on the web interface that allowed the connection to drop without the error message.

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Kyle wrote:

Shouldn’t it keep running if your computer disconnects from maslow.local?

In theory it should, but I know we have had problems with this working in
practice. I don’t know if it was solved or not.

David Lang

Yeah, that should be fixed in the latest firmware.

Knowing if it says alarm or not will tell us if it’s a connection problem or and esp32 restarting problem.

Yea @bar that was Me, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a USB Problem, I realize you guys are busy with M4 but if someone can give me a hand to fix my problem, I would really appreciate it.
Halfway thru the cut it starts going on its own way and when I press the stop button nothing happens, I had to unplug it from the wall to stop the cut, once I set the chains back to its known position, the same thing happens. could it be I need a new Board?
Thanks in advance
Garru2

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Unfortunately I’ve never actually seen an M2 in person (it’s made by an entirely different company) so I don’t know how much help I can be. I can help with M4 problems more easily because that’s my code :stuck_out_tongue:

@bar, Maybe I gave it a wrong name, but its’ a reginal Maslow I bought in 2019 from you :grinning:

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A gotcha, I thought it was a MakerMade M2 which uses a different controller

garru2 wrote:

@bar, Maybe I gave it a wrong name, but its’ a reginal Maslow I bought in 2019 from you :grinning:

Ok, to confirm, you are using the original 2-chain maslow (with the arduino
mega, not the arduino due), connected to your computer via a USB cable, and
running Ground Control.

This setup sends the commands to the maslow in real time, just as (or just
before) they are needed, and there can be times when the maslow is unable to cut
as fast as the gcode says it should because it’s waiting for the commands to be
arrived and be parsed (this shows up when there are a lot of very short cuts,
typically around curves, and especially if you have rounded corners in your
model)

So if you computer gets disconnected, the maslow doesn’t know what to do. It
doesn’t matter if the disconnect is that the wire comes out, or the computer
goes to sleep (or puts the USB port to sleep), or if there is too much
interference and it confuses the USB signals

The best (and probably most common) fix for this was to not run Ground Control
on your laptop by switching to Web Control running on a Raspberry Pi (or
similar) and having the USB connect to it (very short USB cable to avoid picking
up the interference). That operates very similar to the maslow 4 where you use a
browser to control the machine and upload your files to the Pi and it sends the
individual commands to the machine.

David Lang

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That the machine is continuing to move and not stop makes me think it’s not a USB connection issue. Maybe there is something funny going on in the gcode?

If you run the same file without a router bit in it does it happen at the same place?

I run Ground Control on my pc running Win 10 without Wi Fi, not a laptop, I’m not a computer
Guy so I don’t know what Raspberry Pi is.

No, after getting chains back to correct length I would start the cut over, it would almost finish the
first pass or final pass and then go on its own way in deferent spots, and the only way to stop is to unplug.

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Hmmm has anything changed in your work flow recently? A new way of generating gcode or anything like that?

Can you try fully unplugging and re-plugging both motors?

My hunch is that it could be a faulty encoder on one of the motors.

Is it always one motor that’s running away or is it both?

I believe both, on one cut it went up and to the left, on another it went down to left and another
up to the right just random. see pic below, fyi these are all individual cuts one at a time.


FYI I have it set up for a 4x6 sheet, but I only cut on a 4x4

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Can you try unplugging the motors, blowing out the connectors with computer duster, and plugging them back in? I think that this is a connection issue between the motor and controller.