Smooth stepper loses com. when spindle button pressed or M03 S given

[woffler]

I have just re did my system and i am having trouble with the spindle ,if spindle button pressed or MO3 command it loses communication with smooth stepper. I am using a C23 board from cnc4pc and a smooth stepper on xp . The spindle starts runs a few seconds and then stops and then i have to close mach unplug usb and restart to get it back to normal. I ran a separate  shielded two wire cable for the 0-5 volt and ground line to the spindle card i know it has to be noise from some were any idea on how to isolate it.

[Hood]

A line filter may be needed if your spindle motor is really noisy but you could try increasing the filtering in the SS Config.
Hood

[woffler]

I tried increasing it to 100 made no difference i put in a commercial surge and noise suppressor on the line and all the outher power lines.  I am at a loss as to what to do now .I had to walk away for a little bit, i am still trying a few different options but have had no luck yet. I may need a better filter but i am not sure what to use and what i would need i could install it if i knew what to use? I like the smooth stepper i have all the outher bugs worked out except this one,it's stopping me from operating.

Woffler

[Dan13]

Hi Woffler,

Try grounding the SS board to the PC ground with a good heavy gauge wire. It solved the problem for me and many others.

Daniel

[Jeff_Birt]

The problem is noise created by the spindle motor when it turns on and probably some relay arcing as well. You should install a line filter as close to the spindle motor as possible: http://soigeneris.com/cncparts2.aspx (bottom right). (Send me a PM about the relay arcing.)

Please note: This is not a 'SmoothStepper' problem per se, it is an electrical noise problem. With the SmoothStepper you will know right away when you have a problem like this, when running from the parallel port electrical noise will present itself a bit differently (like, "Mach did this weird thing today and I had to reboot to get it to run again" .)