My Background:
I am a hobbist when it comes to CNC. I have basic understanding of the mechanics and what goes where. I have minimal experience on a 2x4 CNC at my kids local high-school. I have dreams of a CNCRouterParts Pro Series 5x10, but no real justification for the cost. Maslow CNC is a perfect fit for me.
I have the full stock Maslow CNC up and running with no custom frame or other parts. I followed everything in the setup guide except I did modify to use 5lb. weights rather than bricks.
These are the Observations/Pitfalls that I had which you may or may not benefit from. Feel free to add any recommendations or suggestions to this thread.
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Building the temporary frame
After you attach everything together, there is nothing that designates the angle that you should have your board angled to cut the arms, brackets, etc. It might be a good idea to just throw in a section for what a suggested angle should be. Depending on the hole selection for the temp. sled, it can get angled away if your backboard is too steep of an angle. My âfixâ for this was that I just added a little bit of downward pressure to the router while it was cutting, but it is a good idea to âjogâ the sled around your cutting surface before you cut just to make sure that the sled will stay flat while it cuts. -
Calibration
The calibration portion of the setup is very important and the first pass of the calibration does not usually produce results <5%; however, the screen does allow for you to hit âNEXTâ If you see the âcut test patternâ button, then you need to keep cutting until you get <5%. I have had to re-run up to 5 times to get it accurate. -
Building the temporary frame
The left and right arms will have a fair amount of stress put on them especially when the cutter is at the upper and lower edges of the frame. If you are like me and get irregular cuts or multiple parts that donât line up, then check for play in the arms. Make sure that you use a lot of screws (not just a few to hold the arms in place). -
cutting frame parts
When cutting out your frame assembly parts, I donât recommend cutting all parts at once at the same time. Use the single parts on Makercam.com and cut individual parts from your 2nd sheet of plywood. -
cutting frame parts
realistic cutting area is about 18" inside all edges of the backer board. I wanted to use the âsweet spotâ on the Maslow to cut out the frame parts, so I cut my 4x8 sheet in half so I could screw it to the backer board in the middle. place your part close to X0,Y0 in makercam. using Ground Control, move to your desired start location and hit the âdefine homeâ button. i used scrap parts screwed to the backer board to help get closer to the edges and it worked great. -
Makercam settings.
I used a 1/4 in. upspiral bit and used a step down of .10 inches. The default of .05 is really slow. I also recommend creating âtabsâ but increase the width of the tabs to at least .5 inch with a height of about .25 inches. the default tab setting was not enough and it did not hold my parts. -
Z axis setting
I used Makercam to generate the gcode and used the actual depth of the board for my z cutting depth. I.e. .75 inches. To set the z zero depth, i would turn the router on and then use ground control to lower the bit at .2 mm increments until i heard it cutting into the surface of the board. i set this a zero and had excellent results.
Thanks Bar, Hannah, and everyone else for helping make this a fun hobby.