Ok all, I have a PRS Standard 4x8 circa 2008ish. It's got that black PC box for a controller and the round "Toroid" in the box for a power supply.
Here are pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/xe4BupgzYNjDrULT7
I've been having two issues lately that I believe are related:
1) Sometimes when I power up the machine my motors don't lock. Sometimes it's just the X axis, sometimes it's all 3 axes. As per ShopBot support, I checked my voltages on the toroid and the PC power supply and everything is within spec.
2) My last three sheets of plywood I've cut, using material, bits, speeds and even files I cut all the time have all suffered from lost steps. I am not silly enough to rule out operator mistake, but I've been cutting this way on this machine for over a year with no lost step issues.
The more I narrow the problem down, the more I believe that it's my X axis that's having issues. The last few jobs I've cut (and ruined) I've lost X steps only
Things I've checked:
- My machine is plumb, square and level.
- My axes aren't binding (checked my moving them all by hand
- My pinions are tight and there is nearly 0 play in the axes when the motors are powered on and stationary.
- Nothing has changed in my setup, no new computer, or anything.
- My dust collector hose has a grounding wire all the way through it, and my dust collector itself is grounded to a steel framed building.
- My PC box is grounded to the shopbot frame, and a multimeter test shows that ground is connected to the steel framed building too. For good measure I just added an extra ground directly from the PC box to the building.
- I'm running factory set ramping speeds and cutting no more than .25" per pass at a max of 4 ips.
I've read other threads on here about issues like this. It seems a lot of people who have issues with my box have grounding issues. It seems like there's something worse going on here, since some of my axes don't lock on power up I'm wondering if the power supply in my box is getting flaky.
ShopBot tech is still trying to help me out, and their solution right now is to upgrade to an RBK box. I'm not against that, but I'd not like to have to spend $3k if there's some diagnosis and repair I can do on my own...