Tales along the way in my quest to Integrate Everything.

On Again, Off Again

It looks like I may have jumped the gun in announcing that the Shapeoko was operational again. It turns out that while it was visible on the USB bus again, it was still not fully functional, or even partially functional for that matter. Carbide Motion would “Connect” to the Shapeoko again, but within seconds it would display an unhappy “Cutter is not responding” message and return to the screen asking you to connect the cutter. I did some reading on this and it appears that it has to do with the 16U2 not being able to communicate with the 328P, and since the 328p was also just replaced and re-flashed with the same results, it is apparent there is yet other un-diagnosed damage or failure on the circuit board.

At this point, I believe we will start looking into alternate options for a controller / driver board for the Shapeoko. I’d like to get something that will let me use it with EMC2, and there would be an appeal to having both the Shapeoko and the laser using the same driving hardware and software. I’d also like to have manual jog controls available for positioning the router. Using a mouse on the laptop is difficult at worst and slow at best when you have to constantly divert your attention back and forth between the screen and the router.

If anyone has some suggestions for a good controller to drive the Shapeoko (and possibly also a laser) I’d be all ears. Sign up and leave a comment below.

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