Finally got my WorkBee setup ready to make some saw dust. I started the "Hello World" job and got half way through the gear logo when it started to bog down. I noticed on the top status bar of the CONTROL software that it was displaying (Not Responding). The error would go in and out until the router finally stopped. I just bought a new low-cost laptop dedicated for the CNC. I could not find any PC requirements to run the software so assume an AMD A6 9220c with 4GB RAM would work. I'm going to try my main i7 desktop computer next. Do I need to upgrade my laptop or is there something else wrong?
Its not really very heavy on PC requirements, but larger jobs need RAM - the 3D representation of a large gcode file can run 2-3gb etc. However, Hello World is tiny! It really shouldnt be having issues with that! On the Troubleshooting tab, there is a button for Application Diagnostics. You can selectively disable sections of the application to see if you can identify a section that reliably hangs on your PC (let us know and we can dig deeper, see if there's a fix we can apply for you) I don't think its outright "specs", as much as incompatibility with a specific component or config on that PC. We have seen about 5-6 other users (of a large user base) with decent specs have this issue (though slightly different from yours, these tend to be on large 3D carvings after an hour or two of cutting), and in a couple of those we got it down to outdated drivers / incompatible hardware (weird model of GPU) Of course you can also use any other Grbl host like CNCjs, bCNC, Candle for Grbl, GrblPanel, and many more too
Oh and since its a laptop, could also be power saving: 1) Disable all power saving 2) Make sure you disable USB Selective Suspend (still active even when power saving is disabled): See OpenBuilds BlackBox 4X Documentation for instructions
Thanks for the troubleshooting tips. Unfortunately, I cleared out the laptop, packaged it up and plan to return it today. The main reason for returning it was because I was not able to upgrade the RAM. It is SMD not DIMM. I'll try my desktop computer for now until the new laptop comes in. Thanks again!
