More Maslow

More Maslow

I tried a test cut on the Maslow recently and had a problem. The plywood circles I cut out before for the filament reel were cut fine. The new test part was a chair leg cut from scaffolding board. As the board is 36mm thick many passes are required to cut the part as I didn't fancy a full depth cut. The problem showed itself as a dropped USB connection. This stops the cut and I had to re power the arduino to get a link back. After some experimentation it looked like the router is generating noise that kills the USB connection. It also seem to very comprehensively kill the WiFi too.

I tried a main filter on the Maslow and computer but that didn't work. Trying to use an old-ish laptop also didn't work as the ubuntu was too old for the software, so that was out. next stop was the purchase of a proper line filter.

This allowed me to cut the entire part (which took about an hour) without a dropped USB connection. I'm pretty happy that this has gone a long way towards fixing the problem, this part took a long while to cut and is one of the biggest ones in the chairs. I may want to cut an entire kit of parts in one go, which would be two of these and some other parts, but I may be able to do that with a deeper cut (especially if I buy a new cutter).

The  sled had to have outriggers added so that it could be stable across the entire board. This worked pretty well too. You can just see them in this photo:

I'm not sure what I'll do if I try to cut from full width boards, this was a smaller board cut from a larger one. I may need outriggers over the top of the sled, or maybe the wider board won't require outriggers on the sled. We'll see.

Maslow Update

Maslow Update

The Maslow is now together:

This morning I moved the motors forwards so that the chains are more parallel to the work surface. Hopefully this will stop the chains jumping on the sprockets when I start cutting thicker material.

The router I am using is quite top heavy and this causes the sled to tend to tip backwards, especially if the router bit it out from the work surface. at the moment I'm putting a rod of steel on the top of the sled as a sort of counter weight. It works, so I'm happy at the moment.

I have made the first 'thing' using the machine:

Well, OK, it's the parts for a thing, not a thing, but this is the sort of thing the Maslow was for. Big plywood things. At first anyway, maybe big scaffolding board things later. These parts are going to be a filament reel for the 3D printers. I've made them manually before and this was way quicker. And I can do something else while the parts are cut out.

The calibration was a bit out before I moved the motors. I'll have to re-calibrate now the motors have moved, but hopefully I can get the calibration back to something as good as I had before. Those discs I made are slightly oval, but I'm hopng I'll be able to manually adjust that out on the next calibration.

The Z axis mount works remarkably well, considering the wood isn't actually attached to anything, it's just wedged in there.

I may have a go at 3D printing a replacement for the wooden version, but this works, so I'm in no hurry.