Hi all. I have a smoothieboard 4x, It was in working order until I had some down time to put in a new spindle.
I didnt touch anything on the smoothieboard side, but now I cannot get my PC to recognize my smoothieboard. I have tried different cables and computers, and tested the SD card separately and the computer can read it.
Im running linux mint
All 4 lights are green. 2 +3 blink fast and the others are solid
What the heck is going on? Im about to punch a hole in the wall here…
from a terminal, do you see the device listed when you plug in the USB cable and then look at the dmesg output? Hard to tell what you mean by the PC doesn’t recognize it since it could mean the application you are using can’t connect/control it or it could mean it doesn’t register as a connected device.
As far as a spindle change not ‘touching’ the smoothie, there could have been a ground loop issue from bad or incorrect connections which fried the USB port on the Smoothieboard.
Thanks Doug I think you’re right, I think the USB got fried from the VFD. I saw another discussion from another guy where the same thing happened. Arthur Wolf even replied saying to replace the board.
When you’ve installed a new board, make sure all power supplies have grounded connections to the mains.
In my life I have damaged several ethernet boards in computers because one of the computers in a network had a mains plug that was not grounded.
Net filters in a switch mode power supply have two capacitors in series that work as a voltage divider.
When there is no ground connection on the main plug, the chassis of the device is connected to half the mains voltage through these capacitors.
There will be no chocking experience because these capacitors have a very low value and the current they conduct is minimal, you can hardly feel it.
For sensitive electronic equipment that’s a different story. When you connect the USB cable between a grounded computer and a non grounded device at exactly the top of the sine wave of the mains, bad things can happen.