I was curious if anyone has attempted engrave with the Maslow yet? I was also curious the finest details anyone has been able to pull off? I would like to try doing acrylic but wasn’t sure if this was going to be outside the scope of what the maslow could do. I am doing this on the floor with my anchors at 14’x9’. My final goal is to engraved acrylic with my custom black and white art work on pieces that are 30”x18”. I’ve been playing around Carveco 2d design tool for this.
I was experimenting with carving with Maslow, I did it in plywood with a 60 degree V-bit, I used KrabsCam with its V-pocket tool, it’s my first experience carving and that’s the tool that was provided to me, Maslow was very precise and the experience I can provide is that the stepper motors in this job were overheating and the machine would finish the job before finishing the entire design and I didn’t see any error messages, although I didn’t really look for the messages, just the machine finishing and I thought it was an error in the G code but then I noticed how the upper stepper motor was getting too hot and my solution was to put an aluminum ruler on the base of this motor to dissipate this heat, after this solution the machine finished the entire design without problems. I must try another tool and other parameters, because for this design I was very conservative in the depth steps and each piece took too long. This job was to make the frames for some pictures for some ceramic tiles and another for the hand-painted work that a neighbor did for us, who painted a Barranquero, which is a bird often seen in this area.
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First off, I like those paintings. And genius idea making the interconnected frames.
What parameters did you use that seem to work best?
What speed was the router set at?
What do you mean you used a ruler to dissipate the heat?
Thanks for sharing and responding!
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Thank you very much. My intention with Maslow is to make all my designs assembleable, minimizing or eliminating the use of screws or nails.
These are definitely not the best settings, as the job took a long time, and the drill bit ended up black at the tip. The depth was 3 mm, and the step down I used was 0.1 mm. I think the feed rate was 700 mm/min, and the plunge rate was 80 mm/min. Next time, I’ll use higher speeds and depths.
Here I also think I made a mistake, because I set my DeWalt router to the maximum speed at 6.
The stepper motors got too hot, especially the one opposite the one connected to the vacuum cleaner. I put an aluminum ruler that cooled it very well.
Your frames are amazing, and the artwork is beautiful! I am also experimenting with feeds and speeds to extend tool life and shorten the job time. My experience, for what it is worth, is that tools should be considered disposable. Burned and dull tools should be sharpened or tossed. I try to minimize the costs by buying bulk solid carbide endmills from Amazon. They tend to be relatively inexpensive. Tool life can be extended by cutting at slower spindle speeds (5000 rpm, for Dewalt, setting 1or 2) and cutting a good chip (.001-.002”) per tooth per revolution). You will be making chips instead of sawdust, cutting instead of rubbing. I also experienced a stepper getting hot. On my project, the problem seemed to be related to the tool being too short in the collet. When I cut through a 3/4” piece of plywood my 1/8 endmill was not long enough and caused the z-steppers to bottom out. I noticed it when the tool failed to cut through the plywood. By then the steppers where hot. Simple fix for me was to pull the endmill out another .1”. After that I did not notice hot steppers during the cut. Sorry for the “inches” measurements. Boomer is old-school and doesn’t think metric.
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I have attempted engraving. The Maslow4.0 handles it well. I tried using a 60 deg., but Easel produces very large files that the Maslow can’t handle (7 mb). I switched to a 1/16” (.063) endmill with a .032 depth/pass and cut “on the path” to reduce the file size. I also use Inkscape with the Hershey Text extension. Hershey Text converts text objects to single line paths. This is extremely helpful when engraving without producing huge .gcode or .nc files. I have included a project made for my daughter as an example. The cuts were made with multiple passes to get the 1/8” deapth and Maslow4 tracked and repeated beautifully!
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This was a long while ago and the machine has come a ways since, so I expect that this would be even better if done now, but it did pretty good on this proof of concept before I got sidetracked with life stuff and my maslow got buried in the garage. Is a low-res topographic map of colorado.
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This is amazing! What software did you use to generate the gcode file? I am running into excessive file sizes with the Maslow4. I am currently using Inkscape and Easel to generate gocde. I’ve thought of trying to use macros to limit file sizes, but I’m not a programmer and macros are still intimidating for me.
I use Vectric Aspire. I also did it in 3 separate cut files. One for material removal with 1/4” bit, then a rough pass and detail pass with a 1/8”bit.
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Thats amazing! Thank you for sharing, I wasn’t aware there was a limit to the size of gcode the maslow can handle… Do you think that you could do multiple files and it would stay consistent?
I was thinking about one day using the maslow to do relief carving as well. How big do you think you could make the relief carving before the maslow can’t handle it?
Ben wrote:
I was thinking about one day using the maslow to do relief carving as well.
How big do you think you could make the relief carving before the maslow can¢t
handle it?
you need to have the sled not fall into the relief. See the video this week were
Bar left some posts for the sled to ride on.
David Lang
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Stephen Roberts wrote:
This is amazing! What software did you use to generate the gcode file? I am
running into excessive file sizes with the Maslow4. I am currently using
Inkscape and Easel to generate gocde. I¢ve thought of trying to use macros to
limit file sizes, but I¢m not a programmer and macros are still intimidating
for me.
I don’t think that grbl/fluidNC/Maslow support macros (most CAM software
doesn’t anyway)
Bar is working on solving the large file problem, but the maslow is very
repeatable (precise) even while we are strugging with accuracy (measurements
correct), so splitting things into multiple files should work very well.
David Lang
Facilitating Carving Entire Surface of Work Piece
Between this and some linear rails to float the machine. Have tested what is in that post on a smaller scale and it works with no issue. Haven’t had a chance to install and test the rails.
Yes. I even took the Maslow off the frame between files.
Now that you can release tension, access the Maslow , change bits if needed etc and re-tension and continue it makes modifications much easier. Just got to check the Z adjustment.
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Yes, even after shut down of both the Maslow and the computer I’ve returned days later and Maslow has stayed consistent. Of course I had to repeat the retract all/extendall/apply tension. But the Maslow kept its position. It even kept the xy origin I had reset for a single part. I often split gcode files into roughing cuts, finishing cuts; in fact I use a different file for every size of endmill. Maslow handles it like a champ!
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I have been experimenting producing gcode from *.stl files (3D). They tend to be very large depending on the cutting settings (depth of the layers, etc.). After seeing other posts, I installed GCodeClean (a utility that makes files smaller) recommended by Tore https://forums.maslowcnc.com/t/and-the-travelling-salesman-arrives-at-gcodeclean-v1-3-0/19688/74. It reduced the size of of 5.4 mb file to around 350 kb under the “hard” clean setting. Haven’t run it yet, but Maslow should be able to process it.
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