I got my maslow kit a few days ago and managed to get it through the calibration once. I had a chain skip a few teeth so back I go to calibrate. When running the calibration the left motor only spits out about half the chain of the right motor, and the maslow is no where near the middle of the board and basically impossible to connect the sled.
Help. I’ve already tested the motors and encoders and the software says it’s a pass but clearly there is something else happening now. The left motor is louder than the right one too and to my uncalibrated eyeball moves a touch slower.
It’s something like 1310mm on the left and 1680mm fed out on the right, it measures pretty close to that so I’m hoping this is just a finger problem on my part.
I’m a little at a loss on this one one. I haven’t seen this happen in person, but enough folks have reported it that is a seemingly common thing to have happen.
Will you check that all of the connectors are very well seated in the motor and see if the issue still happens?
Thanks for the fast reply. Everything looks good in that regard. I ended up just using the manual method so I can mess around and I just ran through the calibration and I’m cutting the honeycomb looking included gcode test. I’ll let you know how it goes lol,
The test cutting completed but I have to do some more testing on a warmer day (Maslow is in a shed). The piece completed and looks good but has some accuracy issues. I’m not too worried, still having fun.
Jon you described almost exactly the scenario I experienced as well: chain not paying out equally and our right hand motor is louder and different pitched sound than our left.
I’m not sure what solved the chain length problem but it seems to have fixed itself, now each time we do auto chain measure it pays out the chain to an almost equal length (both motors spit out to within 3 or 4 links of being the same length). It may have been a few rounds of restarting all the hardware, unsure. We are using bottom feed configuration if that is of any consequence.
This is genuinely really interesting! Glad to not be alone, I’m sure we will get this sorted out.
I’m going over the top and now keeping the slack chain in check with winter washer bottles, the elastic really didn’t like the cold and seemed to lack the stretch I needed/tension.
Thanks for sharing! Seems like some company in the ‘Heavy Weight’ category.
Only on the sled side with me (Your weights are impressive!)
Wondering if the heavy weights on the chains are putting more load on the driver chips?
Can’t wait to see results. Keep up
I’m uncertain as to the stress but my thinking was that it’s a bit of a counter weight to the sled too.
These motors/gearing are so strong I pulled one half way out of the wood because the little screws weren’t enough. I’m using some 1 inch particle board screws now.
Yes old trailer chocks =) they are metal inside and seem to substitute for bricks in a pinch. I’ve really been trying hard to make this work what I have hanging around going to no use. It’s been a fun game and I think shows you could take a box of parts to a disaster and set up making templates for temp shelters or something.
Have you noticed any chain skipping? I like the ease of this system, but I wonder if there are enough teeth engaged with the chain. But maybe the extra weight of the counterweight it is enough to ensure the chain stays engaged on the sprocket.
I got the chain lengths set properly! Small work around but it works fine if I do the auto chain length from the main menu and not from within the calibration pages.
Jon, that makes a lot of sense. My wonky one with different lengths was in the calibration mode and when it got closer to even it was from the main menu. Interesting…
It would be nice for the program to tell you more specifically/verify that you are doing top or bottom feed when telling you which side of the chain to hook to the sled. I second guessed myself a lot if the program knew or remembered I was doing bottom feed.
I just went to town with my wife today to get some plywood, so hopefully I’ll have some time this weekend to cut a nice looking sled and get the calibration dialed in even tighter. Maybe test the newest version of the software/firmware if I get the courage.
