Originally Posted by
dlcw
I can certainly feel your pain. My 2009 PRS Alpha 96x60 took me several months to get operating properly and without to many errors.
The most significant thing I did was grounding. As a former electronics technician, in the Coast Guard, for 23 years (dealing heavily in HF communications aboard large ships) and a HAM Extra class for the last 10 years, I cannot emphasize the need for this machine to be PROPERLY and HEAVILY grounded. Every piece that did not have a clean metal to metal touch was grounded using grounding wire. For example, the legs are not properly grounded to the rails, from the factory, because there is paint blocking the ground. You need to scrape paint away and put ground wires in place that jump across these non grounded areas. The spindle is grounded to the Z car, the Z car is grounded to the gantry and the gantry is grounded to the table, the table is grounded to your dust collector, using a wire thru the hose to draw down static, and everything is tied to a COMMON grounded plate and that plate is tied to a GOOD earth ground. The computer/laptop chassis also needs to be grounded to that COMMON grounding plate. If you don't follow this grounding, you WILL have comms errors, which in turn return results you are seeing.
Since ShopBot can't seem to be able to put together a reliable communications link between the controller and your PC, there will be comms errors. Whenever I have problems, I go check ALL my grounding straps and connections to make sure they are really tight and clean. 99 times out of 100 that fixes the problems. As usual, with ShopBot CNC's, there is the occasional "lost comms" for NO apparent reason whatsoever. Just the nature of this ancient technology. The only reason I don't jump to a Centroid controller is because I still use eCabinets and ShopBot Link in my business. If it wasn't for that, I'd be on another platform.