Chinese 3018 Pro

Hi all,

I had one of the Chinese 3018 Pro CNC machines for Xmas to start learning about CNC. When fitted with the laser it works fine, it when I fit the wood router I’m having issues. I’ve tried 3 different GRBL programs as well as easel software and must have spent about 15 hours trying to get it to work. It gets a certain of the way through a project and then the router freezes in its position and continues to spin. I haven’t been able to complete a single project yet. I’ve tried so many things, USB,s set to not power off, moving all the power packs away from the machine, but for whatever reason nothing works. It’s very frustrating. I’m running it from a laptop which is plugged in to the wall not on battery, I’ve tried all 5 of the USB ports, including a USB extension, different feed rates, depths, bits, programs to exports the GCode etc. Just wondered if anyone else has ever had this problem, and if so what they did to fix it. Thanks

The controller in the 3018 (probably a Woodpecker 3.x) has little in the way of EMI protection/Isolation. Even the stepper drivers have no optoisolators. The spindle is driven via a mosfet controlled by PWM straight from the microcontroller.

Since you see this only using the spindle, it is a good guess that's where the EMI is coming from. Try replacing the spindle cable with shielded wiring and figure some sort of ground on the spindle motor body. Ground the other end of the cable somewhere on the card (bottom row of pins lower left on a V3.4 board are all gnd). I would also look to replace the stepper cables with shielded ones.

Thanks for the advice. I’ll see if I can find some online somewhere