I’m a newbie, didn’t even know there was a z offset. That makes sense. Are you talking a z offset in Maslow calibration? Where might I find it and how might I do it? Did I miss that instruction or thread 
the z offset values are in the maslow.yaml file, there is one for each arm,
giving the distance from the anchor to the arm. Since the arms are at different
heights, each of the Z offset values are different.
David Lang
What router bit are you using? Is it super long?
Using a 1/8 d compression bit fully seated with .6 inch cutting length or so.
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Any instruction on how to edit that yaml file? I’m not exactly confident editing that file nor do I know how
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you can avoid editing the file, in the fluidnc tab where you go to update the
firmware, look at the other tabs, one of them (settings or advanced) shows all
the things that are in the yaml file, you can change the settings there and save
them.
David Lang
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So I’m guessing I change the “/Maslow_brZ”??
Tightening that down a tad should push the cutter in and up to get rid of that bottom right imperfection??
How much adjustment are we talking here and in what direction is tighter?
Paul Prociv wrote:
So I’m guessing I change the “/Maslow_brZ”??
Tightening that down a tad should push the cutter in and up to get rid of that bottom right imperfection??
you don’t adjust the Z to tighten belts, you adjust the Z if the height between
where the belt is anchored and the arm doesn’t match what you have configured.
David Lang
Oh gotcha.
Tested on the spoil board (flat) and with a raised 3/4inch work piece. That didn’t seem. To change the behavior. Still getting those little tear drops as the cutter goes in. Tested a few feet left of center, center, and a few feet right. Got slightly different results.
Didn’t provide new theories. Any ideas?
Pictures are left to right.
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can you make a video of this so we can see exactly what’s happening? If your phone/camera supports doing slow-motion video, that would be good.
a picture of the bottom of the bit would be good (is it designed to be able to plunge or not)
re: Z offsets, you would want to make sure they are correct for calibration and for your cutting, but you need to make all 4 (one for each arm) correct.
It may make sense for you to manually measure where the anchor points are (all 6 possible measurements) and then put them into the onshape manual calibration doc I created to see how they compare to the calculated numbers.
once you have the anchor locations defined correctly, you should not have to re-do calibration unless the frame changes
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I have not used wood routers very much, but I know the direction of travel relative to the bit rotation impacts control. Same on a milling machine where it is referred to as climbing versus conventinonal milling. Which does the Maslow4 use? What happens if you try the other?
I have not read about this topic yet, on the Maslow4 forum. Here is a link to another woorworking forum that gets into climb vs conventional cutting.
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ben1272 wrote:
I have not used wood routers very much, but I know the direction of travel
relative to the bit rotation impacts control. Same on a milling machine where
it is referred to as climbing versus conventinonal milling. Which does the
Maslow4 use? What happens if you try the other?
direction of cut matters if if you are cutting on an edge, it does not matter
when you are cutting a slot (as every direction is the same), which is most of
what we are doign with a maslow. It isn’t something we’ve talked about much.
In any case, it’s defined in the CAM step of the process
David Lang
Question for the OP: are you calibrating with the 3D printed vacuum attachment on? With the Z axis all the way down at some angles the bottom left cable hit the vacuum attachment on mine when calibrating and screwed things up. Noticed that the BL cable was slack afterwards and my cuts were really sloppy. Recalibrated without the vacuum attachment and that did the trick.
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Mine as well - I have designed a different vacuum attachment, but it is basically version 0 and it needs more work to get full clearance.
How’d you modify it, is there an editable file available? I’d love to fix it and create one that I don’t have to pull off if I need to recalibrate.
There is a full set of files somewhere (one of @bar 's GitHub repos), but I did just simply measure things.
With this version 0 I did mess up some of the CAD modelling, so I’ll probably restart from semi-scratch.
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And here it is: Alternate dust port design - Hardware / Sled - Maslow CNC Forums
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@dlang I finally was able to get back to projects and made a video. I am running .84 version and the issue i had before seems more pronounced.
The issue is when doing any x/y/z jogging i get this little lift and let down in the video. So this really has nothing to do with onshape or cad software conversion etc. I couldn’t figure out the slow-mo but i think you can see it clearly here as i job the machine. Note this occurs right after I calibrated it and calibration was ‘accurate’.
Keep an eye on the sled and it you will see it pop up at the beginging and down at the end of the jog command (first is a straight move right; second a z command up).
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This is caused by the belts being extra tight and the system relaxing when the servos power down. It shouldn’t happen during a cut because the servos are powered up the whole time.