The support legs are attached to the top router clamp. And they go off at a slightly wonky angle to avoid the power cords and line up-ish with a couple of the PCB screw holes. They also have a weird hole in them for access to one of the nuts that you’ll need access to, to put the whole thing back on.
A top down view showing the legs doing their thing. Both legs are the same.
What do you think about adding a shield plate at the base of the PCB mount legs… a flat plane where we could add RF shielding tape to help protect mainboard?
The only part of the Maslow design I actively dislike is the pcb mount clipping somewhat permanently to the router and being at risk of breaking if you need to take it off.
This seems like it might be easy to bump and break, though.
I was wondering this too. Also, and I am asking because I don’t know, but would we not have to ground the maslow board and router to the shield for it to work?
But looking at the placement of the on board antenna the shield may need to be knotched and I am not sure now if this is going to do more harm than good.
If the router has a three prong plug it is already grounded.
I would be concerned with a common ground connection serving as a path for more electrical noise not less. I would ground the shield but I would not ground the Maslow board to it.
Things I would try:
Use an extension cord to plug the router and the Maslow power supply into two different outlets served by two different circuit breakers.
Buy some clamp-on ferrite cores and mount them to the cord that provides power to the Maslow board, at the end close to the board.
I worry the most about the Maslow power supply cord and the router AC cord running next to each other for a long distance allowing coupling and transmission of electrical noise. In addition to the separate outlets trick try draping the cords apart from each other and as much as possible at a right angle to each other.
I’ve seen people cut and splice in an external antenna on these boards but its
tricky to get it done correctly
There was someone who was going to replace the esp32 module with one that has an
antenna connector, Bar was going to send him a second board to test with. It’s
probably in transit still.
AH! well I certainly have both on the same outlet and routed the same (in fact zip-tied together) right now. This is good info, I’ll go find an extension cord long enough to use another outlet and route the cord for maslow separately from the router.
Also, sorry to have hijacked yet another thread @md8n. I like this approach and may try to print it this weekend and see how it plays with the dewalt.
realy like this, only one concern: are the upright adapters in the way of the swinging motors of the (upper) arms? In the top view it looks that way, but maybe its not a problem because of the steep angle of the adapters?
I literally did think of this. But decided against it for this iteration as I don’t yet have a good fix for how that may interfere with the operation of the ESP32’s WiFi antenna
My real motivation for doing this is so that I could use a spindle instead of a router. I already have the spindle, but there’s no way you could mount a PB mount to it. So here’s my first effort at an alterantive.
Secondary beneficial outcome is that the spindle runs off variable voltage DC. So no wibbly wobbly magnetic fields from a mains voltage AC cable
So now, if you want to pop off the PCB and maybe take out the router. You don’t need to unplug every cable, and try and get all the spider/face-hugger clips to disengage.
You just undo these two nuts (indicated with the tiny blue arrows), and disconnect sufficient cables to make the job easier.
I’d make those wing nuts or something that makes that easier to remove, would facilitate swapping out the router. Could potentially make it so only one needs undone and the other can just act as a hinge to swing it out of the way.
to swap out the router, you would need to disconnect the red arms at the other end so that you can remove the support at the top of the linear rails. That way you can not just remove the PCB but you can also run the router off of the top of the Z axis and pull it off the sled.
Takes me back to thinking it would be really cool if the router were not what the main assembly was anchored to. Being able to remove the router and still have a fully functional Maslow, other than the missing router, would mean things like swapping tools to make a plotter or a laser cutter, making adapters for other routers, tools, etc, could be standardized, too.
The red arms deliberately do not go completely underneath the PCB assembly. They are just wide enough apart that once you remove the top PCB mount (and disconnect enough cables that you can swivel it off out of the way), and completely loosen the router clamps you can slide the router straight up and out.
