I’m working on assembling my kit and noticed that neither one of my linear rods have a square cut on one of the ends. I can take pictures or measurements if that would help.
I have a metal lathe out in the shop so it is not that big of a deal for me to clean the cut ends up. Even a minute or so with a grinder would probably do fine. Before I do that, my question is how long should these rods be? When I picked up my kit (awesome to meet you by the way), you mentioned that I could shorten the linear rods by half a mm (or about 0.020 inch), but I would prefer to work to an actual dimension.
I agree, that is a part that I’d like to revisit the manufacturing of. The spec for that part is 210mm in length. If during clean up it ended up as 209 I think it would still work correctly.
If you have any issues with it getting too short, let us know and we’ll send you a replacement.
As it turns out, mine were both a touch over 212 mm at their longest. I cleaned them up to just under 210 mm to the best of my ability to measure things.
If anyone follows in my footsteps be aware that the steel is plenty hard, I chipped an insert when my first cut was too aggressive. A lighter pass produced nice curly chips. After finishing up on the lathe, I cleaned things up with the belt grinder.
I have a similar issue. My kit was damaged in shipping, and one of the linear rods managed to escape. I got the replacement in yesterday, and I noticed the new rod is slightly longer. The first one I got measures about 211 mm, the second measures about 212.
Is that likely to cause an issue with the sled assembly? I’m not sure I trust myself (or my tools) to shave 1-2 mm off of a hardened steel rod. If it looks like it will cause an issue I may just cut some shims to put under the support risers.
I had the same problem. The very last part where you screw the linear rod supports down, tap gap was too big. I tried carefully by tensioning it slowly but the whole bottom started warping, so i decided to take it apart to see if I had pushed the rods down far enough. Turns out one was not completely flat on one side and both were about 212 mm instead of the 210mm mentioned here. Thanks for the measurement, with the 2mm gone there will still be a nice small gap but that should be fine. Would have liked it if the length inaccuracy possibility was mentioned in the assembly instructions, then I could have done it before I even started building.
I immediately unscrewed it when I saw how much it was bent (fortunately, the parts were not damaged). I’ll measure the length of the rods today, because they might be longer than they should be.
Another option is to 3D print a shim to go under the support riser. Here is a post about it Maslow 4 3D printed parts thread - #5 by silo0623 I also saw someone do it with a thin sheet of aluminum, but I couldn’t track down that post.
Hello. I ran into the same problem of the linear rods being too long for the supports. After seeing what solutions folks have come up with in this thread, I went to Lowe’s and got a 1.5” aluminum sheet/bar that is 1/16” thick. I cut a bunch of 2.5” pieces out of the bar/sheet and drilled some holes in them in the location where the bolts go. I needed three such spacers per support, so in order to mount everything I used a bit of tape to hold the sandwich of shims to the bottom of the supports with the bolts already in place. That allowed me to easily get all of the bolts in their slots in the sled with the shims and support in place. From there it was just a matter of tightening the bolts with nuts.
I should say that I bought extra m3 nuts and bolts on Amazon because I wasn’t sure whether the bolts that came with the Maslow would be long enough with my shims in place.
