Loading a sheet of wood

I’ve seen pictures of people hanging their sled from the top beam when loading a piece of plywood. I need to make this little mod. My other problem is that the Z-Axis cable doesn’t have an easy way to disconnect. I have it zip tied to the motor mount so it isn’t just hanging off of the motor connection.

How do you get this out of the way when loading a sheet? It runs from the sled, under the waste board, then back up to the arduino. Do you put like a quick connect or something in the cable or run it a different way?

I considered running it over the waste board (vs. under it), but it seems like it would get sucked into the router if I did that.

Thanks.

I’m sure there are a lot veterans here with better solutions but here is my set up: (work in progress)

I made the cable go upward, made an improvised “pulley” in the middle from a zip-tie for now but I wil change it with a real (big enough) pulley for the 2 cables (z-axis and router power). The router power cable is enough counterweight in my case to let both cables run trough the zip-tie to the back of the Maslow but you could add a very light counterweight to make sure. I have my arduino in the middle almost on top of the board and have enough slack on the cable but on different setups maybe not? I’m planning to do this also with the vacuum hose to but not sure if its flexible/smooth enough to get this done (with a very wide pulley??).


The spring was a fun idea but it is kinda useless

I don’t get it 100% out of the way, the cables still can get in the way a bit,
but the sled is mostly out of the way.

I just have hole drilled through the center hole of the top ring bracket and a
screw into the top beam and lift it up to that.

it’s still in the way for a full 4’ tall board, but pretty easy to move the
chains, cables, and sled as needed (at least compared to when it’s hanging down
in the main work area)

David Lang