[JerryBurks]

I have been using an MKII with a Windows laptop without much problems for some 5 years and I did not change any hardware on the whole system (originally Win7, and Win10 for the last 2 years) but I did the big summary Windows update over the weekend.

It happened now 3 times over the last couple of days that in the middle of the machine run the USB connection somehow stalled. That means the machine stops after maybe 5 or 10 minutes in the middle of the tool path with the spindle spinning and the machine controls on the PC are grayed out. I never had that before.

I can stop the spindle with the hardware e-stop and when I unplug the USB connector and re-insert, the machine control comes back. All positions are maintained and I can re-start the machine program. If I am lucky, this time the program will finish or like yesterday it will stop again at another point. The program is a rather low speed tool path with few points, so the data transmission speed should not be a problem. The Planet-CNC controller is the only external USB device.

Question: is this more likely to be a PC problem or something going on in the controller? I will try another PC tonight and see what happens but maybe somebody else has already experienced this symptom and knows what to do.


JB

[PlanetCNC]

Check (and disable) all power saving options, including ones in BIOS.

[JerryBurks]

All power savings options are already disabled.

I made another attempt last night and the program finished without problem. I am beginning to suspect the current heat wave as the source of the failure. When the problems occurred, it was like 35 degrees C in the shop (my garage) and maybe the old laptop just got too hot? The little fan opening blows out some pretty hot air. I will try to open that thing and make sure the heat sinks are free of dust.

[PlanetCNC]

This is very plausible. Overheating can cause PC to behave funny. Computer tries to cool down by using various emergency power saving techniques.

[JerryBurks]

I managed to open that laptop (older HP Pavillion), clean the fan and heat sink and put it back together successfully (with some Youtube help) but will not try that again. I never imagined that such a compact device has that many screws, ribbon cable connectors, snap hooks etc. Oh well, it took about 2 hours and is now working again even with 4 screws left over. But I found a note in the manual that this device may not run properly above 35 deg C anyway. I guess I need an air conditioned shop...