Hey folks, new to the laser hobby here, but not new to cnc machines.

This laser however is throwing me through a loop. It CONSTANTLY is disconnecting in the middle of jobs. In fact I just had it disconnect on me in the middle of two attempts at 2 hour jobs yesterday and XCS is not capable of letting you pick up where you left off, leaving me with half burnt plaques and a frustrating dilemma that has plagued me for actual weeks since I got this thing.

My troubleshooting has been thorough and I’m seriously considering either requesting a new main board or refunding it under warranty.

For context, I am running the machine hard-wired on a beefy gaming pc, so hardware on my side shouldn’t be an issue.

Additionally, I am running an AP2 and an air assist accessory (Xtool’s version, not third party).

I had the problem so frequently that I thought it was the air assist interfering with the air purifier and tricking it into thinking there was a clog in the hose. 

This obviously wasn’t the case after I had checked the error log, which states the following: 

I currently have tried the following:

• Changing from USB to Wifi (and vise versa)
• Changing Connection cord
   
• Changing USB port on PC
   
• Disconnecting and reconnecting Xtool (Manually and in software)
   
• Making sure Firmware is up to date
   
• Rolling back version of XCS Software
   
• Lowering Vector quality from High to Medium
   
• Lowering Laser Speed

• Starting PC in safe mode to use XCS (It does not open)

• Running XCS as admin

• Breaking up jobs into smaller parts
   
• Making sure pre-filter is not clogged
   
• Disconnecting and reconnecting Laser Module
• Cleaning the whole machine and ensuring the laser module ports/connections  are clean
• Changing images from SVG, to PNG, to JPG, BMP (BMP sees less errors than PNG or JPG, SVG is 50:50)
• Lowering DPI of said images to 72 (M1 Ultra default is 96)

As of recent, I just spoke to support and they told me to do/answer this:

1.When the adapter is powered alone, is there any flickering or no light?

• This would mean there’s a power issue. It’s a solid green light so there is no power issue.

2.Please remove all accessories and processing modules and try processing again.

• I’ve done this 50 times in my testing.

3.If the above situations are normal, please remove the motherboard cover and unplug the three wires separately to check whether the machine can be turned on normally after unplugging one of the wires.

• They wanted me to unplug one of three ribbon cables and see if the machine doesn’t power on. One at a time, the machine turned on when each one individually was removed. It beeped when number 1 was removed (labeled RGB), but did not beep when Cable 2 (Connect Z) or Cable 3 (Laser) were removed.

Finally, I did notice a pretty harsh crimp in the “Laser” cable inside of the mainboard. Could be the problem, could also not be the problem.

After all of this, I ran a slate coaster of a pretty intricate design in JPG format at maximum speed to see if I could get it to error out… it worked. Once. Then I figured all was good and did my two hour projects for the machine to disconnect at the 90% point. Amazing. 4 thousand dollars later.

Sorry for the actual essay here, but I’m at my wits end with this thing and it would really suck if I had to return it or refund it.

Edit: I was requested to add a file for reference. The file I added was a commission of a logo by a customer. Yes, it's not the best quality, but the actual printing/engraving of the image was coming out perfect until about the 90% mark… twice. The second file, the “Signalis symbol” was used to test the fast speed and JPG format. I didn't save the xcs file since it worked immediately, but maybe someone can see some sort of red flag as to why the machine is acting up half the time.