I got it on sale too. I was a little skeptical about how much slop there would be, but it is surprisingly sturdy. I am going to connect the stock z-axis motor to it (when my kit arrives) and take the stepper off. There are nuts in the back in rails for mounting the whole z-axis to a support on the sled. Probably MDF for testing, and then Iāll make up a metal one once itās dialed in.
Iāll get some pictures and video of what I have up as soon as I get the chance. Itās an air cooled spindle, but it has a lot of really great reviews. I want to find a RPM indicator for it. I am going to try a hand held laser one for now, but Iād like a mounted display ultimately, so if anyone has a link to something that would work well, please share.
I chose this one since it is both the largest spindle that still uses 110 volts and the smallest spindle that will take half inch bits. That and the fact that if the Maslow didnāt work out I could reuse it on a DIY CNCā¦
We should start our own thread as founding members of the āMaslow Spindle Clubā
Just wondering if you were still running this? I have been running 12,000rpm at 700mm/min with 5.08mm deep cuts. To me the router seems to scream a bit. Which makes me think I need to lower the rpm or take deeper cuts but then again I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.
This is where we run into the necessary step of turning newly-minted Maslow owners into newly-minted machinists
For any machine in any material you will end up experimenting to find the feeds & speeds (i.e. cutting speed and router RPM) that work best for you, on your machine, with your tool, in your particular material. So donāt get too hung up on formulas, magic recipes, or copying other peopleās settings (except as a ballpark starting point).
I would recommend watching videos 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9 in this series to get started. Ignore the specifics (as they pertain to cutting metal) and just get comfortable with the basic terminology and processes. Take some scrap, cut some chips (not sawdust powder!) and youāll be an expert in no time
@Weps That is a great video series on feeds and speeds! Great info for beginners!
@ScrumdyBum After running the tooling for awhile at those speeds, I found the bit was sounding overloaded to me. I wouldnāt describe it as āscreamingā, more groaning, like itās working really hard to dig chips out of the sheet. Ideally, it shouldnāt be making very much noise other than the bit cutting the material. I ended up slowing to 500mm/min with the single flute bit. Iāve been able to push the bit to 7mm deep, but thatās about the limit of the flutes. I get maybe a weekās continuous use out of one bit with those speeds, which lines up pretty well will how quickly we replace the bits for the machines we have at work.
Interesting, according to the feedrates I got from Onsrudās charts 2000mm/min @ 10k rpm is the low threshold for a good speed into plywood with such a bit. Of course, all our speculating about the āproperā speed is going to pale in comparison to actual testing. The chiploads I used to calculate my figures in the first post could simply be wrong for the tool and material.
If that is the case, we are going to need more than 25 tooth sprockets to get a feed rate that is in the correct range. We are probably going to need the 24v motors with higher output rpm (as in, at the output shaft of the worm gearbox) than we currently have, and probably still need the 25+ tooth sprockets. We are certainly going to need a more powerful motor driver to make that work.
The plot thickens, and I will definitely make sure that I start doing these tests after I finish up the triangular linkage trials.
I wonder if a supercharged Maslow can run near that speed effectively. Itās not a captive system and I see the sled skipping, bouncing and flinging all over the place when speed is gets high. The only thing holding the sled down is gravity.
That is a very good point. Even with good acceleration planning, that is a very difficult issue to mitigate. The question (and once again would need testing) is at what point does that issue start? If the answer is that its an issue >5000mm/min, then we can work around it with most tooling. If, on the contrary, it turns out that it happens >1200mm/min, then we have found a limitation in the Maslow Architecture. We would probably also need to test this with different cut depths, sled weights, sled linings (for friction reduction), and bed angles to see if those factors can play a role in increasing sled stability.
I know we recently had issues with the sled approaching 1000mm/min, but if Iām remembering correctly that was due to the motors not being able to move a heavy sled at those speeds.
And furthermore, are there methods we could use to mitigate those effects? A discussion Iāve seen quite frequently is to have opposing tension members (ropes or something with a bit of elasticity) to keep the sled from getting flung around. From what Iāve seen, that solution adds quite a bit of complexity to the system and tends to get dropped pretty quickly. But, if we could use it to fix a limitation of the machine, then it would be worth exploring further.
Personally, I think the 2000mm/min numbers Iāve cited earlier are both realistic with the current electronics and wonāt affect sled stability significantly. I have been wrong before though
Reducing the speed was the solution that was applied. Iāve since then rigged up metering to the motors to watch voltage, etc., but havenāt been back to use it yet.
the current system can approch 1000mm/min, so going to either 24v or 25 tooth
sprocket will increase the speed to the 2000mm/min range (the problem is that
the 25 tooth sprocket will decrease your power so you would have to go with a
lighter sled)
as you say, more testing is needed (and ideally from more people)
Agree with all. The 0.003" minimum chipload recommendation I found from a Whiteside tool rep yields a 1500mm/min feed rate @10k RPM. If sled weight is surmountable, I think the 25T gears are the way to go.
That said, my solution since before I ordered was to get a spindle and slow the bit down to an appropriate speed while making full depth cuts. Some videos show Bar making 6 or 7 passes to cut parts cleanly; fix that (maybe even by finding the right tool and settings on the R22002) and youāve got yourself a 600% speed increaseā¦
