I have a few questions, that may help me to decide if I can justify buying a CNC.
A long time ago, I saw the videos about the original Maslow CNC cutter. I believe it only cut through the wood at one depth, so all results would be flat. That’s fine, but I thought I also heard that depth control was in the plans. Can the Maslow cut a relief image into the wood, such as cutting a screen door that looked like vines of ivy, with sculpted leaves.
If so, what would be the range of depths? 1/4 inch? 1 inch? 3 inches?
Are there any plans to create half-depth tabs, so it will be easier to cut and sand away?
Is it possible to modify it to cut harder non-wood materials with different bits and software setting.
I don’t plan to cut granite, steel, or aluminum, but it would be nice to know it could be possible, even if that meant going at a snail’s pace.
Does using it (nearly) vertically increase wear and tear on the belts or motors? I noticed you demonstrated the calibration by laying the wood flat on the floor, but that could have been just to illustrate that bricks and gravity are no longer used.
The current Maslow can definitely do multiple depths. Up to about 2.5 inches. I have only tried an inch myself. There are several people in the forums who carve signs and plaques. Thin tabs would be easy to plan. That’s more a function of your cam program. I have cut three and four heights easily and carved signs with a v shaped bit. For deep relief the Maslow rides on the surface with it’s sled so you would want to plan the cut well so that the sled wouldn’t fall or tip as it cut. The Maslow also wiggles about a mm in my experience so cuts requiring multiple passes might be a little less precise. Not sure about harder material than wood plastic or foam but I mostly would be concerned with bit temperature problems as it would be hard to use water or oil pumped on the bit with a Maslow and running a power tool dry on harder material just melts bits. Also dust control would be difficult.
Maslow can definitely do multiple depths in the same cut. Smooth sculpting and wide areas of relief might be difficult. Check out the projects part of the forum. Lots of good examples of relief cutting there. Hope that helps
Thank you very much. You anwered most of my questions. I assume that having a work-around for 1/2 depth tabs means that it is not built in, but I did realize that they can be built into the original design. I just saw how easily he put in full tabs at the last second, and hoped that partial depth tabs were built in as well. 3 or 4 heights implies that 3 or 4 seperate cuts in the same wood, each with a seperate but related design. Good for signs, but not good for engaving images or sculpting leaves. As for supporting the sled, thin supports could be left in, then chissled out. A bit like a vertical tab. Not a big deal, it but does limit uses, and I am too cheap to buy two different machines. I do not have plans for harder materials, but it is always nice to have options. Adding an oil drip or water spray should not be that difficult, but it would be messy, and I would most likely need to add drain holes to the sled to prevent floating.
I will be looking at the projects, because to justify my purchase I will need to have 10 projects I want to make for myself, with at least 5 projects that could be sold to pay for the machine. I am not greedy, just cheap, with a very low income.
The current Maslow can definitely do multiple depths. Up to about 2.5 inches. I have only tried an inch myself. There are several people in the forums who carve signs and plaques. Thin tabs would be easy to plan. That’s more a function of your cam program. I have cut three and four heights easily and carved signs with a v shaped bit. For deep relief the Maslow rides on the surface with it’s sled so you would want to plan the cut well so that the sled wouldn’t fall or tip as it cut. The Maslow also wiggles about a mm in my experience so cuts requiring multiple passes might be a little less precise. Not sure about harder material than wood plastic or foam but I mostly would be concerned with bit temperature problems as it would be hard to use water or oil pumped on the bit with a Maslow and running a power tool dry on harder material just melts bits. Also dust control would be difficult.
Maslow can definitely do multiple depths in the same cut. Smooth sculpting and wide areas of relief might be difficult. Check out the projects part of the forum. Lots of good examples of relief cutting there. Hope that helps
Thank you very much. You anwered most of my questions. I assume that having a
work-around for 1/2 depth tabs means that it is not built in
no shapes are built in to the maslow. The maslow cuts what you tell it to cut.
There are three setps in CNC cutting
designing your part (CAD Computer Aided Design)
converting your part (CAM Computer Aided Machining)
cutting your part (CNC Computer numerical control)
the CAM step is where you take your design and decide how it will be cut out.
This includes features such as tabs. What size and shape the tabs are depends on
the features of your CAM program.
with most CAM software, you tell it the size of the tabs you want and where you
want them, and it then provides the instructions to the CNC machine (in the
gcode) as to how to move. The CNC machine doesn’t know that what it’s cutting
are tabs, it just knows it was instructed to move from point A to point B as
speed C, then to point D and speed D, etc for thousands of instructions.
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