I’ve worked through the static issues - 15mm error. I’ve hot glued and replaced cables. Earthed the sled and bought an anti static hose for the vac. And I can’t get through more than about 30mins of cutting before I get read fails and have to stop and retract and extend and start again.
It can’t be the cables - sometimes it says the yaml file is corrupted. Sometimes it flashes red and won’t respond until it is disconnected from power for 20 seconds or so.
The first errors today were happening at exactly the same place on the sheet. As soon as it got there it crashed. 3 times.
I have to say it. I’ve never owned something so full of bugs.
What is going on with this machine? If I replace all the electronics will it work? Did I just get a dud? Bad board? I see others having similar issues with 15mm errors.
I’ll add that with bloody minded perseverance I did mange to get one project completed and it was a doozy. After I earthed the sled and got the anti static hose I got about 60 hours of semi interrupted cutting and finished a large scale cut out artwork. Since then it has been nothing but maddening crashes, fails and frustrations
That super frustrating. I think everyone here has experienced one issue or another while using their M4. That being said, I don’t think the amount of issues you’re having is super normal. From my own experience, I’ve had to overcome a range of issues some machine and many others my own doing. Despite those issues, I’ve been able to make several cuts that each lasted several hours and sometimes even changing bits or turning the machine off and setting it up again and continuing with another cut later. I know this hasn’t been very helpful, but I don’t think that the extent of difficulties you’ve seen are completely typical, so my guess would be an unlucky draw on a bad part or two. I really hope your issues are finally able to be troubleshooted and that you are able to make some more cuts without pulling out all your hair first.
60-hour cut!? That’s crazy. Would you mind sharing some pictures of what you made? Really curious on what would require such a long cuttime.
I’m really sorry to hear that. We want to make CNC routing accessible and that means easy to use and frustration free, but we’re 100% figuring it out as we go. None of this has really ever been done before we’re winging it, learning and getting feedback, and hopefully improving bit by bit.
There is for sure a tradeoff in terms of when to release something like this where on the one hand we want to wait until all the bugs are found and fixed before putting it out there, on the other hand as an open source project the number one way that we can find and fix bugs is by putting it out there and getting feedback and contributions from the community. The fastest way forward to living in a world where everyone can afford to buy a large format CNC is this, but it’s for sure frustrating along the way.
My advice is to put it on the shelf for a couple weeks and wait for the replacement for the encoder wires to come out. I think that 90% of the issues we’re seeing right now are because of that one issue and we will hopefully have a fix soon.
This seems like the same issue I’ve run into today. A bunch of crashes, sometimes maslow.yaml corrupt, sometimes 15mm error, belts are loose, some cuts are wobbly… Not sure what to make of it. It was cutting pretty much fine yesterday, just my settings in my program had it cutting way too slow, so I adjusted that today and now I have all kinds of random issues.
I hope these are fixed by the new encoder cables that Bar is talking about.
Fantastic work! Your persistence and dedication make a difference, and because of the challenges you have, Maslow continues to grow stronger every day. You are an inspiration to all of us, showing what’s possible when we stay committed.
Curious what version of FluidNC is being used by current Maslow firmware? Maybe I should ST*C. Am asking because the V1E folks using FluidNC are hitting some job impacting failures too, details at https://forum.v1e.com/t/jackpot-fluidnc-webgui/42831/346?u=azab2c. Sharing incase info helps either community. Cheers!
EDIT: Nevermind, found https://github.com/BarbourSmith/FluidNC fork has 0.84 release, but not FluidNC version. Looks like fork was created way back enough and many FluidNC edits ( 548 changelists ) haven’t been integrated. So, looks like Maslow being a fork, isn’t a wrapper or separate component that has a FluidNC dependency that revs over time as FluidNC versions get released.
