Eastbay Source Maslow - Concern with proper stretch cord placement

Troubleshooting
1

Hi all, first time Maslow user here.

Frame and temp sled assembled.
Calibration almost complete, the “test cut” is where I am having concerns. Please check out these images. I tried anchoring the chains and bungees in areas similar to how the eastbay assembly guide showed them. Is this much slack on the left / tension on the right normal? My sled was getting a little questionable in its center of gravity as it got up to the corner so I panicked and shut it all down :sweat_smile:

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2

Good call on the shut-down. You do not want that chain to wrap on that motor and with that much slack that is what it could easily do. First off, might I suggest you route your chain a little different. Many will tell you that instead of this reroute, you would be better off with a hanging counter weight system. Given the space I have, I haven’t done that and have never had a problem.
A couple suggestions:

  1. reroute chain like this by using the plastic tube with the nail through it (see vertical arrows) as a means of keeping the chain from hanging on the motor sprocket. Having the plastic guide there will also work to hold your chain when you realign your motor sprocket and reset your chain lengths.
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  2. shorten your bungee to keep that pulley slack a short as possible. If you don’t want to shorten the bungee, then at least reattach it further from where it is and maybe run it down the frame behind the work piece so it is actually tight and reattach it. I looped a few knots in and that helped. Too much bungee tension is bad and will cause errors in the far corners because the motor will be tensioned from the wrong side of the chain rather than the sled. Too little tension may be worse if you destroy a motor from it.

To verify everything is good, drive to the opposite corner (lower right) and verify the bungee still functions and then to upper left.

The final cheat option is to move the cutting surface to your right 2 feet and cut what the machine thinks is near the center but is on the end of the sheet. Screw it to the spoil board on the very edges where you for sure won’t hit it with the bit and try again.

1 Like
3

Thanks @Orob, I’ll give your suggestions a try! I’m using ground control at the moment, is there a way I can hop back into the test cut step, or will I need to re-do the entire calibration routine?

4

Try the “extend chains - automatic” option. That will let you do just the calibration steps you need and no more.

5

Hi Michael, welcome to the forums!

You might want to try moving the top nail closer to the motors or shorten a bit the bungee cord as recommended by Orob
full_frame_temp

Or tie up the bungee ends directly to the SS pulleys like so

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Gab

6

Hey Gab! Thanks for the info. I haven’t done an exhaustive investigation yet, but I was marginally concerned with how far away I’d have to mount the bungee’s to get the proper tension. In your second picture, you forgo the little mid-pulleys completely, and just use one bungee to take up tension in both chains, right? Have users that have implemented that approach found tension to be too high?

7

Right, there are a lot of users using this approach, some are using bungees and others springs from home depot, just make sure you have enough tension to keep the excess slack off the chains and you will be fine.