I’m all calibrated and ready to cut my 2” thick foam board… can I release tension and shimmy the board under maslow without having to do the retract dance?
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Yes, so long as you are using V1.15, Just release tension, move material under Maslow, it may help to release 1 or 2 belts to make it easier, then reconnect belts, Apply Tension, wait until it says Ready to Cut, and you should be good to go. Have fun!
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When do you input the material thickness?
Do you mean when or where?
I haven’t needed to yet,
When: After loading material
Where:FluidNC then Config Values then
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More when (I am not on 1.15 so it might lead you through this) - If you want to change the material thickness from what it was when you calibrated, and do it like OP (release tension, slide the material in, apply tension) - what step do I change that value?
Sounds like after loading the material 
Yes exactly. I can’t remember which version brought in the release tension, apply tension and continue functionality but I think it’s worth updating to 1.15 as it lets you power down while in Ready to Cut, then power up, Apply Tension and it should go back to Ready to Cut without having to the Retract, Extend, Apply Tension dance. You have to leave the belts under tension however.
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It should not matter. v1.13 introduced the ability to power down and back up
when you are in the ‘ready to cut state’.
After you put the foam in and change the value, move around. If the belts are
super tight, then we have a bug and you will need to power cycle.
David Lang
I think dlang said the spoilboard thickness value wasn’t included into the calibration on 1.15 due to a bug so he had me add it manually to my z values.
None of the youtube videos about calibration mention spoilboard thickness.
Wes wrote:
I think dlang said the spoilboard thickness value wasn¢t included into the calibration on 1.15 due to a bug so he had me add it manually to my z values.
correct
None of the youtube videos about calibration mention spoilboard thickness.
it’s a pretty new feature
David Lang
What is the proper order to add material under the maslow? I’m cutting 2inch rigid insulation board. I’ve got 60mm set for /Maslow_workThickness in config area. Saved and restarted.
Maslow-serial (6).log (6.3 KB)
------- Release Tension Method ---------
I released tension… slid my material under the maslow and then clicked apply tension… result: State: Extended. Suggests that I recalibrate in logs.
-------- Retract/ Extend / Tension Method ---------
On this attempt I retracted > extended… put my material under maslow > Applied Tension. Result: State is Extended. Suggests I recalibrate.
Thanks
Only thing I can see is your Z value at 67mm seems very high, you only need about 4mm at the most above the surface
Thanks; that is to accommodate for my 4 inches long bit… 2 inches flute.. 2 inches shank. I’ll try sinking it deeper into the router. How much shank should go into the router?
As much as you can, I don’t know of anyone who has tried anything that thick. If minimising height doesn’t work you might have to run a find anchors on top of your workpiece. Just make sure you save the maslow.yaml file first.
You may have to add 50 mm to the Z values as well to compensate for the increased height when running Find Anchors.
You could try taking out the bit, lowering the Z home 50mm to see if it then lets you go from extended to Ready to Cut
I have seen this too! It seems to find the position is less accurate when the z-axis is way up. That shouldn’t be the case, so I will investigate that tomorrow and see if I can spot anything there
I got it to work on top of 1.5 inch foam; but 2 inch was too much. Also it was super tight on top of the 1.5 inch… so I don’t think the material thickness setting in config is getting applied.
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I did find a bug which was that the measurement for “apply tension” wasn’t taking into account the z-axis height and I put in a fix for that one.
I’ll take a look at this and see if I can replicate it. It’s possible that the setting is only taking effect when the machine is first powered up?
Bar wrote:
I’ll take a look at this and see if I can replicate it. It’s possible that the
setting is only taking effect when the machine is first powered up?
I think we are seeing enough value in getting Z correct to think about exposing
these in the config or settings menu.
I just tried a calibration where I didn’t realize I had gone back to a default
yaml file and was getting fitness around 0.2, changed the Z heights to something
approaching correct (35 for all of them) and got wildly better results (until
the printed anchor broke)
David Lang
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I agree. I’m going to clean up some space in there and add these along with the wifi setup. Those are basically the only settings that most users should need to mess with
Bar wrote:
I agree. I’m going to clean up some space in there and add these along with
the wifi setup. Those are basically the only settings that most users should
need to mess with
rather than the setup dialog that asks for the wifi stuff, I think the
spoilboard should be in the config menu where you set the calibration
parameters, and the workpiece thickness may even deserve a the last button spot
to the right on the jog arrows. (or in the band we currently use for showing the
position)
the spoilboard should not have reason to change very frequently, but the
workpiece thickness will change a lot more.
With plywood, 1/4 vs 1/2 vs 3/4 isnt’ a big change (set it to 1/2 and you are
probably good), but with foam, 1/4 vs 2" is going to be common, and if people go
to build foamie trailers, it’s common to have 3" foam with 1/4" or thinner
plywood glued on it.
David Lang