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So, I don’t have the strongest electricity going out to my shed. I couldn’t run my large shop vac and dewalt x-carve at the same time without flipping the surge protector after a few minutes. I then switched to a smaller shop vac.
I’m now in the middle of my first large project (10"x20") and after 45 minutes of carving with shopvac on, the power went out…
In the past, when the power went out and turned back on, the XC would randomly start carving in a new spot, probably I’d assume cause it skipped a few lines of the gcode being sent while the computer was trying to send info to a machine that was turned off.
I clicked the X in Easel out of fear of messing up my 45mins of carving. But don’t know how to continue.
Ha, mine went out the other day and I went running for the shop. Just as I got to the machine, the power came on and I watched my 1/32 bit snap off…
I’m looking for some option of a breaker that will pop if the power goes out and nothing will turn back on until I manually switch it. Those bits get expensive after a while.
I would be more interested to know if there is a way to when power is lost (I’m using a laptop) the program can pause, and when power is restored it can continue where it left off
We use battery backups on our CNC routers/laser engravers. They are expensive, especially large enough ones to keep everything running when the power goes down. If the project your working on is expensive (your time, materials & bits) they can survive and continue through an outage or even momentary loss of power, so IMO it’s worth it. They handle brownouts and spikes very good for protecting your PC and electronics also.
Powering a vac with one is not recommended because of the amps they draw.
never thought about that a battery backup (even have one on my iMac at work).
great idea. may have to look into that. Guess I can just put the shop vac straight into the outlet and run Dewalt and X-C components through the backup
You can edit the gcode and delete the lines that have run. Reposition the spindle at the original zero and run the remaining gcode. I have tried this before with mixed success.
I managed to save one project. But I think I could have just restarted from scratch quicker.
Yea, on todays project, it was either spend 45mins trying to get it back right and save the piece of wood, or just start over. I opted to start over. but this time without the shop vac on 24/7…
@michaywood
If you use a program that allows you to enter grbl commands and send your G code to the X-carve (like UGS) you could do the following:
Have your X-carve hooked up to a UPS that will run the machine for a short time period.
When the power goes off you issue a “feed hold” command to grbl. This will do a soft stop which maintains the machine position. Then you have the UPS continue power to the Arduino until the main power comes back on.
With power restored you issue a “cycle start” command to grbl and the carve will continue where it left off.
You would need to size your UPS to allow for the period of time you want to be able to run your X-carve while you respond to the main power outage and then for the time period you want to run the Arduino by itself to last through the power outage.
At this point this is all theory, I haven’t tried it, but it should work according to the grbl documentation.
You might also be able to have an automatic feed hold with a script that is run when the battery backup detects a power loss depending on the type of backup.
Edit: in this situation you would also want power to the stepper motors the whole time as well as the Arduino in order to hold the exact feed hold position…
I think I would consider a self latching relay. Perhaps have the power on the normally open side and stop on the normally closed side so the second it trips it would stop the code. Just my $.02
If that’s directed towards the OP, yes, that is what I do now. Just run the shop vac a few seconds every ~10 minutes or so to get it all up. Used to think the dust boot was required, but adding the deflector to the Dewalt helps a lot with not blowing saw dust everywhere
I bought my dust boot with the understanding that I’d constantly have it running to Remove all the dust. That quickly changed when I realized how loud the machine and a shop vac running together could be. I still use my dustboot but only turn the vac on for a few deconstruction here and there. I plan to build a soundproof cabinet in the future to hopefully be able to run it more often.
