This is a common occurrence when you are connecting to your controller or running your jobs over a USB connection, whether it’s a Nighthawk or an XPRO-V5 or any other type of controller.
Spindles and Plasma torches create a lot of electro-magnetic interference (EMI) while they’re running and USB connections are very susceptible to interference due to the high levels of electrical noise present in a lot of common CNC environments. We have developed the Nighthawk controller with an array of communication features to combat this phenomenon. The best way to avoid losing the connection while the machine is running is to avoid using USB and instead use WiFi, Bluetooth or run jobs from an internal storage such as an SD card.
If it’s not possible for you to avoid USB connections as your controller doesn’t support WiFi or Bluetooth, you might have some success with disabling “Selective Suspend” which is a process that computers use to turn off ports to save power.
Watch the video below for how to disable this.
Another option is to get yourself a higher quality USB cable which has shielding built in as well as a ferrule in the cable, which is a block of iron clamped around the outside of the cable and is usually covered in black plastic for protection.
If you’re using a CNC3D Nighthawk controller on your machine you are able to connect to your controller over a WiFi connection and control your machine just like you would be able to over a USB connection.
Watch the video below for an overview of the WiFi connection settings in the Nighthawk.