The router is lowered until it skips steps before calibration. If I try to jog in the Z axis after calibration with belts tensioned, it spools out excessive belt during the Z move.
The anchors are installed on the same plane as the maslow sled moves on.
The router is lowered until it skips steps before calibration. If I try to jog in the Z axis after calibration with belts tensioned, it spools out excessive belt during the Z move.
The anchors are installed on the same plane as the maslow sled moves on.
The standard Z offset settings assume that you have a 3/4" spoilboard and a 3/4"
workpiece, so they are ~1.5" (~38mm) higher than they should be in your case
where the anchors are on the same plane as your sled.
when you jog the Z axis, it is extending the belts so that they still reach the
anchors, but if the Z size of the triangle is shorter than it thinks it is, too
much belt will be extended.
it looks like you have modified them from the default, but you may want to do a
check.
I havenāt modified them from the default. Checking the maslow.yaml I downloaded from the most recent release yesterday morning, it has:
# Z axis values
# These define the height of the anchor points in relation to each of the arms. You do not need to change these typically
Maslow_tlZ: 100
Maslow_trZ: 56
Maslow_blZ: 34
Maslow_brZ: 78
For clarity, if I were to attempt to measure the Z-offsets, Iām imagining I should measure from belt bottom/center/top at the anchor to belt bottom/center/top at the arm on the maslow?
Iām using @Dan_Bunby 's 3d printed anchor points, which do add a small amount of additional height above the board. They are mounted to the top of the spoil board.
Anecdotally, I did initially install the maslow on a much larger frame on the floor, with the anchors set below the spoil board, but still had issues.
Additionally, I do anticipate working with materials of varying z-heights, ranging from 1.5mm to standard 1/2 plywood. Do I need to anticipate recalibrating when I change materials?
Do these issues āgo awayā in a vertical mount?
Thanks again for your help unraveling this. As mentioned previously, I can be rather daft and may very well have missed a glaring document outlining ātypicalā z-height setupā¦
I have been running my own calibrations on a surface without the intended spoilboard or workpiece. The calibration runs fine but then the belts get loose on jogging I think as described here.
Can I expect nearly perfect results if I add the thickness back in? Is there something I can do in the settings to indicate the zero or non-zero thicknesses to account for this and make it optimal?
It seems that the calibration can adapt to the situation. Why canāt the jog mode?
I havenāt modified them from the default. Checking the maslow.yaml I downloaded from the most recent release yesterday morning, it has:
# Z axis values
# These define the height of the anchor points in relation to each of the arms. You do not need to change these typically
Maslow_tlZ: 100
Maslow_trZ: 56
Maslow_blZ: 34
Maslow_brZ: 78
For clarity, if I were to attempt to measure the Z-offsets, Iām imagining I should measure from belt bottom/center/top at the anchor to belt bottom/center/top at the arm on the maslow?
yes
Iām using @Dan_Bunby 's 3d printed anchor points, which do add a small amount of additional height above the board. They are mounted to the top of the spoil board.
Anecdotally, I did initially install the maslow on a much larger frame on the floor, with the anchors set below the spoil board, but still had issues.
Additionally, I do anticipate working with materials of varying z-heights, ranging from 1.5mm to standard 1/2 plywood. Do I need to anticipate recalibrating when I change materials?
not for differences that small
Do these issues āgo awayā in a vertical mount?
no
Thanks again for your help unraveling this. As mentioned previously, I can be rather daft and may very well have missed a glaring document outlining ātypicalā z-height setupā¦
I have been running my own calibrations on a surface without the intended spoilboard or workpiece. The calibration runs fine but then the belts get loose on jogging I think as described here.
Can I expect nearly perfect results if I add the thickness back in? Is there something I can do in the settings to indicate the zero or non-zero thicknesses to account for this and make it optimal?
It seems that the calibration can adapt to the situation. Why canāt the jog mode?
The problem is that if the Z offsets are incorrect when you do calibration, the
caluclated anchor positions are going to be wrong. The calibration will still
move around and pull the belts tight at each point, but since the calculations
produce incorrect anchor locations, when you go to jog, the calculated belt
lengths will be incorrect and you will have incorrect belt lengths (leading to
loose or too tight belts)
since you are dealing with triangles, where the belt length is the long side of
the triangle, and the Z offset is the short side of the triangle, if itās off
just a little bit on a large frame, itās not going to result in a large error.
But as the frame gets smaller, and as the Z offset gets more incorrect, the
calculated locations differ more from reality.
Would it make sense to add parameters for āSpoil Board Thicknessā and āWorkpiece Thicknessā prominently in the UI so that the software could adjust the z-offsets for the situation? Intuitively, that seems like a trivial fix, no?
(Iām just here coming to understand that the z-offset in some discussions isnāt referring to the route bit depth z-axis control.)
Otherwise weāre going into the config here and adjusting them - is a calibration expected after changes to z-offsets? I havenāt touched mine, but they donāt match what the tooltip says are the ānormalā values. Did these get calculated during calibration?
Would it make sense to add parameters for āSpoil Board Thicknessā and āWorkpiece Thicknessā prominently in the UI so that the software could adjust the z-offsets for the situation? Intuitively, that seems like a trivial fix, no?
(Iām just here coming to understand that the z-offset in some discussions isnāt referring to the route bit depth z-axis control.)
Otherwise weāre going into the config here and adjusting them - is a calibration expected after changes to z-offsets? I havenāt touched mine, but they donāt match what the tooltip says are the ānormalā values. Did these get calculated during calibration?
normally, you would set the z offsets to match your frame before you do the
calibration. If you are using a normalish frame where the anchors are at the
depth of the back of the wasteboard, and you are say 1-2 inches for wasteboard
and workpiece. there is nothing to do.
changing from a 3/4" workpiece to a 1/2" workpiece on a frame designed for a
4x8ā workpiece is not expected to need changes for example.
this is an area that has not been extensively tested, and a lot of people are
sucessfully using the maslow without worrying about it. But if you are having
problems, or the accuracy is not good enough, and have checked other things,
itās an area to double check (especially if you have a non-standard frame size
or anchors)
I think that this could just be an encoder connection issue. The only time that the 15mm error has really come up for me is when an encoder connection is the cause of the issue.
@anna when youāre testing smaller frames, are you seeing a crucial difference of having spoilboard and stand-in workpiece vs not regarding post-calibration jogging unspooling, please?
I havenāt done much testing with the smaller frame in general. But I havenāt noticed a difference for just the spoil board vs spoil board+workpiece. I have not run it without the spoil board at all. I can set up the smaller frame and see if I can replicate it next week.
I have seen the unspooling error right after start up once or twice, but I cant seem to make it happen regularly. I just hit the emergency stop and do a restart.
After failing to make my M4 work on a scenic design project over the summerājust about all of it due to various errors I madeāI had to put it on the back burner for a while. This week, Iām starting a new scenic design project, so I set the M4 up backstage, got a good calibration immediately (Yay!), then made a few missteps.
Last night, after one full day and three long evenings, I finally sorted everything out, and after a dry run, started a test cut, only to have the M4 cut the air above the stock, and not the stock at all.
It was the end of my time in the theater, so I went home and sometime between when I left and when I woke up this morning, I had an epiphany: the origin in the Manufacture environment of Fusion must be set to the top of the stock, and not the bottom.
Oops!
This afternoon, Iāll try the test cut again. I bet this time it works.
I feel you. It seems like every time that I start a new project, I make at very least one dumb mistake that makes me want to bury my face in my hands. The biggest thing is trying not to make the same dumb mistake twice (regardless, I do that too at times). Keep at it, and things will hopefully go smoother and smoother each time!
This is the project that was supposed to make ample use of my M4 - we ended up doing the curves and such by hand, and it was a pain and not as precise as it could have been, but we got it done.
Once our set is complete, Iāll take pics of the pieces cut on the M4 and post them.
Itās finicky workā¦not in terms of precision per se, but in terms of what considerations need to beā¦well, considered.
Budget
Stock scenery (reuse to make budget)
sightlines
lighting
safety
usability
aesthetic
Iām a multimodal theatre artist, so I think about scenic design as an actor, as director, and as an audience member (with awareness of sightlines and lighting/shadows). Itās very rewarding, but as Iām not a professionalāin my career I teach Englishāitās always about knocking off the rust and remembering what this task is.
I was able to calibrate after making the Z adjustments and run the maslow logo gcode in a dry run (no bit). But when I put the bit, I got the position error again.
Was able to order the new encoders and mcu this week and looking forward to trying everything with them in place. @bar really appreciate the discount code in the email I know the costs of producing everything can really add up!!!
Should calibration be run on the spoil board only or with a piece of material on top of the spoil board? Iāve been using the spoil board only since it seems to be pictured that way in the calibration instructionsā¦
Should calibration be run on the spoil board only or with a piece of material
on top of the spoil board? Iāve been using the spoil board only since it seems
to be pictured that way in the calibration instructionsā¦
it should be run at your common cutting height, so with the material in place.
(or you can adjust the Z offset values to be correct in any case)
