Support FAQs

We have been made aware of an issue affecting some Commander users where upon connecting to their Nighthawk after the latest Commander update a box pops up informing the user of a Web Portal Update from version 0.00 to 1.5. Rarely this update will fail with a warning message, or it may look like it has completed successfully.

When the user attempts to reconnect to their Nighthawk the update box pops up again with the same information prompting a Web Portal update and re-occurs every time a connection is made.

If you are have issues with Commander after an update the first thing to try is forcing Commander to re-download and apply the newest version which will override any potentially troublesome files which were downloaded with the update causing the issue.

This will not delete any of your custom files like buttons, macros, machine settings etc.

You can force Commander…

We provide most of our CNC3D machines fully assembled, wired and calibrated. As such, we have factory profiles in CNC3D Commander that include setting lockouts to prevent users from overriding machine settings and potentially damaging their machines.

In this support article, we take a look at how to recover your controller from the CNC3D Lock out if you have mistakenly loaded a CNC3D profile on a machine that is not a fully built CNC3D machine.

1. Connect to your controller as you normally would using your preferred connection method.

2. Go to the "Run Job" tab in Commander and in the "Manual Command" section at the bottom right and enter "$User/Macro0=" into the text box below the Manual Command heading. Then click on the "Send" button below the text box.

3.  Disconnect from your controller and completely exit out of Commander and relaunch the program. Reconnect like you normally would.

Below is a list of possible Errors and Alarms which you may encounter while running your GRBL based CNC machine, whether it's one of our Nighthawk family of controllers, or a 3rd-party GRBL controller on something like a laser engraver, pen plotter, or router. In our Commander software you will see the status indicator flash red with ALARM or ERROR when any of the following occur, and you can click on the box for an explanation.

The most common cause of this issue is the spindle’s mains wiring diverting the signal from the touch plate to earth, rather than back to the origin point in the Nighthawk.

The Nighthawk has pull up resistors, capacitors, and related circuitry on its PCB to protect itself from power surges as well as filtering the signals coming from peripherals such as limit switches and probes to avoid false triggers. While this provides protection, it comes at a cost of some very slight electrical resistance.

As your spindle is earthed with a very low electrical resistance, and electricity will favour the path of least resistance, the low voltage probe signal from the Nighthawk can leak to earth through the spindle.