Hi,
one of the belts does not retract fully. It stops about 25 cm before the arm. When I look from the side into the arm I can see, that the belt is already touching the idler gear.
First another belt didn’t retract fully, but I could fix it by extending it about half a meter and then retract it again fully.
@Bar can you please give us the longest belt length the spools can handle?
Thank you
Now it works, I extended it much more and now it retracted fully. I needed to click the “retract all” button three times.
there is probably more tension (and therefor better packing) when retracted by
the motor than when wound by hand.
David Lang
I cut 2 foot off my belts and haven’t had spooling/retracting issues since.
The retract all stops when the motor hits a current threshold and I’m getting feedback that I’ve set it too low. Next week’s firmware update will make that current threshold a setting that you can change and I bet that increasing it slightly will get rid of that issue.
Can we get an update when the firmware posts? I just updated to v0.66 and am having the same issue. I will try fully extending and then retracting again.
The change is already in there, but it is a setting.
What you want is to increase the current threshold to be used when retracting in the Maslow.yaml file.
Specifically you want to change Maslow_Retract_Current_Threshold: 1300 to something higher like 1600 or 1800
bar: I first setup with .66 and everything went well. However a 50x50mm box had the correct width, but not height.
I installed .65 to adjust number of tests, but twice it just moves down the board (vert) and crashes on the floor.
I went back to 66 and noticed that 66 does not seem to read the new vars you added in 65 for number of tests, current or offsets.
Is that true? Thought you would want to know before Wed.
What were the dimensions of the box?
100% Thank you for the heads up!
It shouldn’t be, but it could be! I will investigate.
Is this after doing the cycle of Retract All → Extend All → Take Slack between each change?
yes, all the steps. New screen layout helps with that, thanks.
50mm with .25" bit. Width 44.1 Height 46.4
I have a bunch of questions, but let’s start a new topic for this, this seems unrelated to the length of the belts fitting on the spool.
bar: Sorry only posted here because it was the only ref to 65 I found.
I should not have gotten off on the size problem yet. I was going to wait for the next release Wed. if the new options were in the parm file. After that I will open a new topic after my next test.
Oh I will open another topic under Tech Details for a new var.
Order 334 Checking in - just got my arms completed and have a similar question. The spool is full all the way to the idler shaft and there is significant excess belt.
Try extending the Belt all the way out and measuring it. Maybe the supplier made them to long?
Also I know that there have been reports in other threads that Spooling by hand had alot of excess. but after getting everything connected, doing an extend all, and then retract all allowed the spools to be wound tighter by the motors V.s. trying to do it by hand. This allowed the rest of the belt to be spooled.
That is normal, the retract all function will pull it in for you when you get to that step.
That being said, we packed the absolute maximum amount that we we could on there and if you don’t need all of it for your frame then you can cut some extra off no harm done.
Thanks bar! There may be room for an extra wrap once the idler shaft is seated on both sides, didn’t look completely parallel to the motor shaft. Also could be why assembling from the spool towards the motor works best.
One of the belts on my kit was longer than the others. I built the standard 8x10 foot horizontal frame, so I need enough belt length to reach the corner pins. However, I had a “full spool” on each arm plus a little more. After fully extending and retracting the belts several times, I hoped to smooth the rough spots and compress the wrap better. Increasing the retract tension from 1300 to 1600 helped and I did hit retract over and over again. In the end, I always had 3 arms fully retracted and one with about 15 inches extra. So I cut off the excess belt and reattached the end anchor support. Now they all retract and all of the spools are completely full.
If the length of the belts is frequently more than might be needed, especially if someone doesn’t have a full size frame, the user manual should have a note to check the belts for a specific length before assembly.
