Alright, I’ve been accumilating parts for a little while and now have some Maslow parts available on my website: www.moto-obscura.com
Most notably, I have motor mounts currently available for sale that work with both GY31ZY motors (the same size that came standard in Maslow kits, and GW370 motors (slightly smaller motors that I stock).
I also have some GW370 gear motors for sale in a slightly different gear ratio than the Maslow motors
(158.33:1 vs 191:1), and I have aluminum drive and idler pulleys for converting to steel reinforced GT2 belts instead of chain. I just ordered Circuit boards with TLE5206 motor drivers so that will be available in about a month.
I plan on having full “Maslow Lite” kits available by December which will be cheaper than the original kits, it will be belt drive, have a tension system that will do away with bricks or other weights, and will have smaller, less power hungry motors. Until then I will be continually adding parts and accessories to my site.
The design of the new electronics shield? Or of the Belt system? I’ll post up some photos of the new Electronics layout when I get home from work, and make a drawing of the belt system. It is very similar to the chains, but with stretch cord being used to tension the belt and the bottom of the sled through a couple pulleys.
Awesome! You should list those parts in the Community Garden Market! That way everyone who comes to our website and clicks on the “Store” button will know you have them for sale, not just folks in the forums. There’s a video on how to list them here:
Here is a poorly drawn illustration of the setup I have in mind. The two black lines (where you would expect chains to be) are steel reinforced GT2 belts (like what you might find in a 3D printer). The red and blue lines are 1/4" stretch cord, which can stretch to about 4 times it’s original length. If my maths are correct that should be enough for the sled to move anywhere on the 4x8 cut area, but still provide required tension on the belts and sled.
I’m building a prototype frame currently to tests this idea, so I’ll take some photos as it progresses. It might make sense to start a new thread in the hardware category.
I think this would improve the performance on the bottom corners, but I suspect worse results on the side mid-height. If you are, for example, on the left mid-height, you would have vertical pull and pull on the right, but no pull at all on the left side… So I suspect the sled will be pulled too much to the right, due to lacking counter force on the left.
While I encourage people to experiment and don’t claim to have all the answers,
there are a few things that concern me about your proposed kit.
smaller motors that consume less power are going to be weaker or slower than the
existing motors. We know that we are skirting with problems wtih the current
motors running out of power along the top of the machine.
There have been many threads talking about alternate tensioning systems, so far
nobody has beena able to make one that is better than the stock system. You may
be the first, but be aware you are treading over covered (and failed) ground
first. If you don’t want to hunt down the other threads, I can go over the
theoretical problems that other people have tripped over.
Belts vs chains is a good experiment to make, I suspect that belt stretch is
going to be more of a problem to deal with than chain sag is (and you don’t
eliminate the sag problem, so you have two factors to compensate for)
Please build your prototype and test it’s accuracy. we need people to
experiment. Even if the experiment fails, it’s good to have someone make a good
try and document the results to save others time.
Does anyone know the whereabouts of @ScottyWarpNine? His website is unavailable. I’ve DM’d him but he hasn’t logged in here in quite awhile. Some of his parts are listed for sale on the main site.
