Complete Newbie NEEDS HELP!

This is hobby class gear. It’ll be a great learning experience while (like virtually anything in the CNC arena) testing your frustration tolerance and adult language skills. Think if it as a way to see if you have enough interest to go further without a second mortgage or raiding the kids college fund. There’s a reason that a Maslow is 1/10 or less (like way less…) the cost of a basic commercial machine. That’s great for home gamers, but for a business not so good. Heck, it’s a fraction of a good cabinet saw.

That 40+ipm is more like half, plus divide it by 3 or 4 (or more) passes on a 3/4 sheet. Remember the precision isn’t as good as the expensive stuff, is it good enough or can you sand to fit?

When 3D printers were new the forums were full of people who were going to buy one, quit their day jobs, and make a living. A tiny percent succeeded after lots of hard work and living on cans of beans, most didn’t come close.

Not to be Moosie Downer, but… A Maslow will let you learn some basics (production shop stuff uses different software) and get your feet covered in sawdust (water and router’s don’t mix) while exploring the idea of a new or expanding small business while you have alternate means of support. For the actual business your time is far too valuable for one to be effective.

Now for some practical stuff. If you decide the moose is drinking swamp water you’ll need several Maslows since you can’t afford to be out of business if one breaks. You’ll still likely need that cabinet saw (maybe a $3K SawStop, cheaper than one ER visit), and a bunch of other tools including good dust collection. Shop space, utilities, insurance (including for you), sick/injury down time, etc. Done a business plan yet? Good way to get it all down on paper even if you’re not pitching it to the bank or investors (that includes yourself…). Got enough resources to live on for 6 to 12 months (or more) while getting started? Ever worked in the business before (or ran any business for that matter)? You’ll spend as much time on non-woodworking business matters as actually making stuff (although all that time the Maslow is running will help here). Family, if any, supportive? Explored the potential market? Ready to deal with the less than 10% chance of success, and have both an exit plan and plan B? Ready to work 16 hour days and forget what time off is? Considered working for somebody else to learn the business if you haven’t?

My youngest daughter is an entrepreneur. Works constantly, travels all over the world, won lots of awards, raised lots of money for the company. Lives on peanuts, calls Mom and Dad (mostly Mom…) for money to live on. Has become an expert on bedbug control from cheap apartments (really. Her local exterminator supply offered her a job). Loves it most of the time.

To shift gears, what are you planning to make?

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the big problem with going the DIY route is the motors, ir you search e-bay for
#25 roller chain sprockets you should be able to find them.

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Opendesk is a company you should look at. It sounds like you would be looking to become one of their affiliated local makers. Search this forum for ‘Opendesk’ to see some discussion and personal projects using some of their designs.

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Bar is the designer, Hannah is his girfriend who is helping him with a lot of
the work of turning the idea into a shipping kit.

look on youtube for Bar’s video on different routers and why they do or do not
look like good options for the maslow.

I don’t yet have my kit setup (garage space problem) but I do a bunch of design
work here and have created one of the linkage kits to improve the maslow.

David Lang

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With the complexity of open source licensing that may not be as easy as you think. There’s a lot of personal use, no selling, designs so you need to figure out which ones you are allowed to sell. Or figure out how/if you can pay to license them.

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Welcome!

I just want to say +1000 for everything everyone has said. I would emphasize that Maslow isn’t designed to be the backbone of a shop. The cabinet shop next to where we work has a ShopBot that they run 10hrs a day and as much as the 16k they paid for it sounds like a lot, it pays for itself over time.

The goal of Maslow is to make it affordable for everyone to be able to get their feet wet with CNC. I wanted to learn how to use a full size CNC router for years but I could never find the right place where access to a machine was affordable. The maker space near where we work is good example. Membership is $150/month, the class to become CNC certified is $150, and machine time is $60/hour. It’s a fast machine and for someone running a maker business it might make more sense to look into renting machine time like that.

All accolades should go to the community :smile: As you saw with the flood of great advice you got the project is driven by the community. I mostly just do the boring things like make sure the taxes get paid and the stuff gets through customs. I couldn’t possibly keep up with the pace of innovation and creative problem solving that this community does.

I know everyone thinks Hannah and I are dating, but we’re business partners and old friends. We spend a LOT of time together so we usually get people guessing we’re siblings or dating but we just try to run a small business which is a little like dating and a little like being related.

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What a awesome community this is, I’m BEYOND blown away by how accessible information has been, how welcoming & patient everyone has been (#NOOBLOVE) and to have a head of operations/owner commenting on my forum post within 24 hours of listing is something I’ve never experienced before.

@bar It’s wonderful to see that you and your business partner seem down-to-earth and sane. it appears success hasn’t gone to your heads.

as much as I’d love to be able to afford forking out 16k for a full-bore machine, I unfortunately don’t see being that liquid in my “near” future.

I am heartbroken to read, direct from the main man that my Maslow won’t be able to be the backbone of a shop. I am however hoping to be able to be taught and to teach myself with the help of this tremendous community the ability to master this system and software as to push our Maslows to the absolute limits and to possibly make us all stand back in awe with what we can create!

I REALLY don’t want this to NOT perform the way I so desperately need it to, If I can just get what my minds eye sees it doing into the software and onto a 4 x 8 piece of plywood. We’ll all be making money, spreading joy, and nurturing creativity of others!

Sorry for the potentially cheesy rant folks LOL

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We could eventually all build 2 maslows and double the speed in that way.
:smiley:

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Back to back on the same stand

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I’m absolutely devastated to hear that, Z axis isn’t up to par and that making a living via full time production may not be feasible…yet

I was really hoping to be able to flood Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Offer-up, Etsy, ETC with some choice CNC’d furniture and decor

keep in mind that the maslow is designed to make things from big sheets of
plywood. The results tend to be large, and are therefor expensive to ship.

are you aware of any free or open source sites where one can download files
that need little to no reworking and can just be sent to Maslow/competitors
machines for immediate production?

you won’t get rich doing the same thing everyone else can do. you get rich by
finding a way to do things that other people aren’t doing.

With a maslow, that’s going to be customizing things. Even if it’s only making
custom signs, you need to enter the text to customize it. And you really need to
be able to adjust the sizes of things. Think kids versions (in several sizes as
kids grow), dollhouse versions, Adult versions, Big and Tall versions (I know a
lot of people over 6’ who would love to be able to get furniture that’s just a
few inches taller than standard)

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OpenDesk has some interesting things along this line, worth a look.

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Order Confirmed!

Cant wait to get this up and producing!

Thank you all again for your help!

Any suggestions on linkages for the router sled?

@pillageTHENburn 's linkage is looking VERY tempting!

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I’ve been setting up one of @dlang’s top-mounted pantograph linkages. Well made and it fit nicely into an open space on my sled. I could wish the chain attachments were easier to attach and unattached, though. An opportunity for me to add a personal touch :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Whichever one you choose, give thought to how to make the support pillars sturdy and accurate. Having the fasteners in exactly the right place at the top of the pillar, rather than at the bottom, is important.

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both linkage kits work well, the wood one is $30, the metal one $40

The wood one needs to be glued together, the metal one doesn’t

the wood one is easier to detach the chain from

the wood one has more predictable errors (but in both cases the errors are very
small, and far lower than the stock system)

I’m obviously biased (I wouldn’t have made the metal one if I didn’t think it
was better than the wood one :slight_smile: )

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There is more stress on the pillars for the wood kit than for the top-mounted
metal kit (on the top mounted metal kit, the stress is passed through the links
and the pillar block vs the 45 wood kit where the stress is passed through the
sled)

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They definitely both have advantages and disadvantages, @dlang already mentioned the most obvious and critical ones. If you’re using the suggested Ridgid router then either linkage will work great. If you happen to have a much larger router then the top-mount approach has big advantages.

Like David said they both have very little slop/error, the biggest difference in that regard is probably the way the slop reveals itself up: for the 45˚ design any slop runs parallel to the chains and can be effectively cancelled out when calibrating (because the slop only changes the distance from the bit to the chain tip, but not the shape of the arc the chain tip traces). Any slop in the top-mount design ends up adding together (because joints are under both compression and tension) this can move the arc that the chain tip traces slightly higher and it can’t be easily removed with calibration. I don’t think there has been very extensive testing yet but it doesn’t appear that even this kind of error is super bad.

@MeticulousMaynard has a top mount linkage that he’s using (I don’t know if it’s one David made or if he made it himself) so he might be a good person to ask if you have practical questions about a top-mount design. I know he was experiencing some inaccuracy problems at one point and he is excellent at documenting his results so he’d probably be a wealth of knowledge.

I happen to be a little biased too but probably not in the way you’d expect… I actually really like the top mount design a lot; I like the look and I like that it gets way out of the way and it’s also just really cool! In fact it’s one of the very first designs I tested when I was originally working on the linkage concept in general but in the end I could not personally get comfortable with the compounding error problem so I decided to pour my energy into the 45˚ design because I could wrap my head around errors easier (and I knew how to account for any that would show up). David did an excellent job designing and cutting the parts for the top-mount kit too! With that said, I have not had an opportunity to assemble mine yet to try it out in person. So all of my experience comes from early wooden prototypes, so take that for what it’s worth.

I think you’ll be happy either way.

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Isn’t it the same amount of stress just distributed in a different way through the system?

Are you referring to the fact that in the top-mounted design the forces from each chain effectively pull directly on each other and the sled and router simply hang from the end, while the 45˚ design spreads those same forces around the router through the sled itself?

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Yes, in the top mount kit the bars pull against each other directly (or to be
more precise, through the bolt connecting the two sides), leaving virutally none
of the chain tension to be passed on to the sled through the pillar (just
what’s needed to move the sled, none of the competing tension)

While with the 45 design, the pillars have all the chain forces applied to them,
and so need to be very ridgid or any flex they have translates into errors

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I bought mine from @dlang. It’s been working pretty well for me so far, although I think that my performance is going to be worse than if you follow his instructions instead of going off the rails like I did. I still need to figure out a better hardware setup than I’m currently using because it’s introducing errors into my linkage system. See the top mount thread for more details.

I plan on buying one of @pillageTHENburn’s kits and doing some comparisons at some point.

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You might want to look at the “mostly printed CNC” machine, or the related “lowrider CNC”, for something in between Maslow and a ShopBot.

Also, just wanted to give you encouragement about starting a business. There is this idea that you have to go “all in” with a business, take out a huge loan, work for nothing, and years later, hope that you pull a profit. This is not the only way to run a business. Check out http://popupbusinessschool.co.uk

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