This goes back to the very earliest days, before the ring and top beam frame
design when the motors were mounted on angled wings out from the top corners.
as the kits started arriving and people built them, they were unable to get
close to the accuracy that Bar was seeing, so Bar built a new machine and was
unable to replicate the accuracy he had been getting with the first machine.
figuring out why and where problems were led us to designing a new frame (one
with a solid top beam), the chains in the center rather than hanging down the
sides, and the ring/linkage options.
There were several 1000+ post threads on these topics as we hashed them out.
one other thing that you did with the 1st gen maslow that we don’t want to
repeat was to re-use the makesmith github repo and overwrite the code for the
old machine.
The code for the new machine needs to be in a separate repo (or at the very
least, a separate branch, but a sepeate repo is probably better)
I am astonished at the progress. I’ve had my Maslow for about 4 years and have gotten as far as WebControl. I’ve wondered why development hadn’t continued, now I know.
Since gravity isn’t the factor it used to be, I can see building a frame that suspends the sled. It certainly would be an alternative drive system to the typical flatbed cnc.
If you are building a gantry, build a coreXY machine (this has the two motors
fixed so they can be big ones and the wiring doesn’t have to flex). That will be
much simpler than using the maslow approach and adding a gantry to it.
you can also setup a better Z axis than the maslow will have (as the maslow
makes assumptions about where the sled is)
The maslow is a fantastic machine for it’s purpose, but if you need a gantry
anyway, you can avoid a lot of the complexities and sources of error that the
maslow has and end up with a more accurate and easier to support machine.
Probably both …I’ll post it here for sure so if you are following this thread you will see it. We’re just waiting for some paperwork to go through with kickstarter
Congrats this looks amazing. Would of been even more amazing at the $350-$400 price you teased before instead of $525. What’s amazing is this appears to be cheaper to make and works better then the original and thank god it comes with a sled.
Like the original Maslow, the teaser price is always the goal, almost never the reality. It would be nice but given the state of component costs these days, hitting that target would be nearly impossible.
After spending thousands of hours trying to make Maslow 3 functional, I don’t mind paying an extra $100 to skip over some steps with Maslow 4.
If @bar went the injection mould method for the large sled there’s a ton of upfront costs to that where the original Maslow didn’t have that. And then there’s all the belt take-up gearing parts which also look moulded. So you can see that all the plastics used have upfront costs which are probably not amortized over 1,000,000 units but much fewer.
Some of that might be replicated with a laser in acrylic or even 3D printed but some might be best injection moulded. We’ll have to wait and see the details and where optimizations can happen.
My concern is currently with all the gearing, motors and belts at the sled and how well they are protected from the dust from the router. The previous design keep the motors high and dry so one could pretty much get away with a simple dust remover which dumped the cut material on the floor below the Maslow. This design might require a very good dust extraction system.
We already had some amazing dust collection with the prior system, so i don’t see this being much of a concern, especially once everyone has the system and starts releasing their personal mods and improvements.
My system is likely one of the worst to use as an example of a well tuned system, and I can cut and drill on it for 8 hours straight without having any dust end up on the floor or in the room.
It’s likely Bar has considered the problems which would arise should it be dusty around those belt carriers and motors/gears and that builtin dust extraction port and sled isolate the areas really well.
that looks like the frame that Bar built for the video, but (as one of the
people who did the math to advocate for the 12’ top beam) I don’t see that that
large a frame would be needed. but see the notes below.
on the orginal maslow, going from a 1’ overhang to the side to a 2’ overhang to
the side roughly doubled the amount of force that gravity provided for moving
the sled into the corner. The maslow 4 doesn’t need this)
On a related note (which may be significant), the original design had the motors
18" above the top of the workpiece. Later on, the recommendation has moved to
24-30" above, to reduce the force on the sled at the top center (where the
chains are closest to horizontal)
The new sled is significantly lighter (no bricks, smaller router, smaller
diameter for the sled and not solid), but the motors are more powerful.
So, it could be that for full speed you need the added distance from the
workpiece, but may be able to operate at lower speed/force with smaller
disatnaces, and if you do a horizontal layout instead of near vertical, you
should be able to significantly reduce the offset.
I also thought the reason for the higher top beam (beam height above work surface) was to reduce the amount of force on the motors at center top. Would this still be a factor even with the additional motors? wouldnt we also have this concern on the bottom now?
It is still a concern at the top, although with a lighter sled less force is
needed, and I believe this has more powrful motors (as well as faster ones)
It’s not a concern on the bottom as gravity is working for you instead of
against you.
But I don’t know how well the maslow 4 will handle equal length belts not being
in the center (it does to some extent, as the endpoints in the example are at
different heights, but that could be the cause of some of the rotation that Bar
mentioned). It may be that it works, but you have to offset your designs
accordingly.
With the original maslow, we know that if you tilted back to 20 degrees,
friction was too high to work reliably, but the new machine is able to lay flat
and work. (personally, I’m thinking in terms of a torsion box frame that folds
up against the wall, but then lays flat for work)
…I’ll post it here for sure so if you are following this thread you will see it. We’re just waiting for some paperwork to go through with kickstarter