Hello,
Been putting together my first 4.1 Maslow. I followed the 4.1 assembly guide, which initially went well. However, upon starting calibration (1.11.3 firmware), I started to notice issues with how I put together the maslow.
I first started noticing that I had to set the retraction force to high values ~2000 - 3000 (which I’m guessing are in mV?) in order to get the motors to retract at all. I think I over-tightened the two halves of the arms together, so I took all the arms apart, and put them back together with silicon grease. I used a pocket driver, and set it to the lowest torque setting and tightened everything back up.
However, it still seems like on some of the arms it requires quite a bit of force to hand wind/unwind the. Furthermore, after trying to do retract all & extend all, the required retraction values are still pretty high (1500-1750). So loosening everything up and using grease helped somewhat, but it still seems like the belt, spool or belt guard is causing to much friction. Also, while I was working on the maslow, to my surprise a capacitor broke off the board onto the table, which didn’t make much sense since the cover had been on throughout this whole process… So maybe the fan wire was pressing against it or something…
Fortunately, I know myself, and I had already an extra ordered another board just in case which had already arrived 
I can also probably re-solder another cap back on…
Moving on, after watching the calibration videos again, and reading the forums, it seems like 800-1000 in terms of retraction force is the norm. So I took it apart again one more time and I was noticing some gear gouging/scratching against the arm body:
Then I hooked the planetary gear directly to a DC power supply and supplied 24v so that I can easily extend retract and watch the mV go up or down depending on the required force. Now the arms were pulling about 0.6-0.8V on extension and 0.9-1.3V on retraction…
However, throughout all this process of taking it apart, putting it back together, testing, etc, I think I’ve been causing damage to belt guard, idler gear and the spool. Especially on retraction. Furthermore, I noticed quite a bit of movement in regards to the belt guard when retracting. Also, one of the nuts holding the belt guard down was spinning freely in it’s slot and not grabbing. So couple arms had some snaps here:
Then unfortunately, after not paying close enough attention to the current draw during retraction:
Pretty disappointing screw up on my part 
.
So, I’m not quite giving up yet. I have a 3d printer and some PETG, and I can print the plastic parts. Though, I can’t print the idler gear and I noticed that the idler gear is shipping from China, which is just to long. Are there any alternatives?
I could probably find some other kind of spur gear and lock it to a shaft…
