[SOLVED] All axes stopped! Program still running! [Check USB connection...]

I'm confessing this here in case someone should experience the same thing.

I was roughing my First Big Project (48x48x2) in cherry and the dust foot's exhaust clogged so I was chasing the sawdust with a secondary hose that was a little too short to reach everywhere. I was doing my best and keeping up by changing positions and leaning and re-routing the hose and... when the spindle just stopped moving. It was still spinning, just no XYZ (actually it had been cutting in Y on the straight and level). AXIS showed the program was still running.

I killed it figuring I'd lost zero for sure and went about trying to raise the head so I could re-home and move it back to my project zero before restarting.

But the Z wouldn't raise. It made clicking noises and then on (very) close inspection of the screw seemed to be taking nanosteps. Of course I had the covers all off of the Z-axis before I thought to check the others. X and Y had the exact same trouble.

I replaced the (Mach3 5-axis) controller board with the original I'd already replaced last year when I thought IT had gone bad. (It hadn't.) I tested it before mounting permanently. Tested fine. Okay. Put it back together, put tools away, test again. FAIL. Oh, but then I see I left the USB cable unplugged.

Could it be??

Short answer: yes. Without the 5V supplied by the USB to the controller (it sure ain't gonna work but also) the machine just jibbers and jonks when asked to jog. Connect (everything, like you're supposed to) and the machine behaves normally. My theory is that the instructions might contain important information.

"Apparently" while I was doing my quick, Catwoman-like moves to stay up with the sawdust volcano, I set my ham-fisted foot down on the USB cable and disconnected it electrically, although not visibly, from the computer. I saw the effect immediately, but my foot let on like it didn't know anything about it.

So while the machine is back running, a) I am too embarrassed to go in there and be seen by it, and b) I have now, for a second time, thought a controller board was bad when it wasn't.

I wish I could fire me, but then who'd even try the crazy stuff I try?

tommylight wrote:

Thank you for sharing, it is nice sharing mistakes too, not just success.
Regards,
Tom

I got a boat load of those mistakes if you need some....lol

Tom,

I sorta 'luded to it, but backed off saying "the USB is 'only' there to supply 5V because the parallel port specification does not provide it" because the guys that designed it didn't call me and tell me that. (I imagined that it COULD be supplying something else too, like 'ether' or 'box scores' or something.) I came up with that theory all on my own when I wondered why the machine came with a controller requiring connection to a "gameport" and installation of Windows-only software needing a very particular "device driver". (You could have knocked me down with a middling-size goosefeather at the time when I looked up the parallel-port spec and found no mention of 5V. I wouldn't be surprised now if someone wrote that the cereal port doesn't supply cereal.)