First Cuts and Lessons Learned......so far

[skalous]

Finally finished enough “around the house” projects to build a frame and get my Maslow put together. I was able to overcome each issue encountered through the forum posts, so thank you to the community for all of it.
Assembly and Calibration:

1. Had to up the current limit a bit to get consistent full retraction. This was the first thing I learned in the forums and I wished I had looked sooner as I partially disassemble the unit looking for issues first.
2. Was very frustrated with the overall experience until I turned off the connection monitoring. Saw a post about this while looking at the retraction issue.

First Cuts:

3) Got a successful cut on my second try. You can see the first fail just below the sled. I assumed it was an error I made in the set-up, but the same thing happened later after two successful runs of the same file. I am using Fusion 360, so I am pretty sure it is the plunge-on-start issue that was reported, but have not had a chance to try the fix yet.
4) Got the shop vac hooked up after the first cut and what a difference.
5) Had the power plug pull out of the maslow on a later cut (solved) and after as someone put it the “retract, extend, tension dance” I was able to re-start the cut with very little deviation. I was pretty impressed by that.
Overall I am pretty excited build some full projects and will be watching the forum for tips on how to improve set-up and tool change efficiency.

[steve70]

Ran into a situation using the 3d printed button pusher to change tools. It suddenly wouldn’t fit. Got my wife to help. She has nimble fingers and usually finds more success. However this time, even she was left frustrated. The problem was not with the button pusher. I found that while changing tools, I over-tightened the retainer nut, which caused the router to move inside the router clamp. It moved just enough to prevent the button pusher from doing its job.

Moral: use just enough tension to hold the end-mill in place and tighten the router clamp to hold the router in place. I am using the downtime to rebuild the machine and address several other running issues. I noticed I am dropping nuts and screws on my work pieces. Also I’ll grind the upright rods 3/16” shorter so the top retainers will sit flat. I want to cut a full 4X8 sheet to the edges so ill try a larger frame (10’ x 14’) and see if the belts will extend that far. This should help with the “lifting” issue near the edges of the sheets.