I thought one of the advantages of Maslow 4 is that it can work completely vertical. Is that correct? Maybe vacuum could help hold it to surfaces.
If so, I’d like to use toggle clamps to fix the workpiece to a random stud wall in the garage. Fix the belts to studs a bit further out. No frame required.
If that would work, Martha, maybe you could build a Maslow closet off the side of your ramp or deck. A rectangular box with roof, 3 fixed walls, and a sliding door or lift up door. Big enough to run Maslow 4 inside of. Not occupying living or shed space, weatherproof, somewhat soundproof, no sawdust in the house. The space can double as a garbage can shed when not cutting. Maybe compost bin nearby collecting the sawdust. Have fold down shelves to be an intermediate spot to place groceries while opening door and carrying things inside.
I use a power chair myself. Wooden wheelchair ramps get super slippery when it rains. Was thinking Maslow 4 could cut shallow traction patterns into the decking planks of a ramp that is already built. Just attach it directly to the ramp deck.
Cut personalized kids artwork, or any image that matters to you. The pattern doesn’t matter much for traction. That could even be a money making service you provide to others with ramps. Might even work on aluminum ramps.
By supporting Maslow on a couple parallel straight edges atop your deck, you could use a surfacing bit to level your deck if it matters to you.
I wonder if you could line up a few sheets of plywood right next to each other leaning on the hand rail of your ramp. And get really long belts to cut them all at the same time like a giant relief sculpture. Or just hang Maslow 4 on wood fences and cut art into them.
I can think of possible fixes to this. One would be to cut about 1.5" squares out of steel and weld inside of unistrutevery few feet. That should really strengtheen the unistrut. Another would be to cut smao section of conduit and place inside the strut diagonally. This leaves most of the unistrut still usable for cla.ping with both options making the unistrut less flexible.
I think I am going to try unistrut with internal bracing. What I envision. Trailer with bicycle wheels. Unistrut center frame. Post type main vertical support. Tilt angle that is adjustable from near vertical to horizontal. Arms that attach like trailer hith angling up down and outward. All internal braced. Arms can come off when traveling. Plan on 4 2 foot square boards that will bolt to diagonal arms. Each board has a vacuum pod to use if desired. Or can rotate to conventional clamp. Other two 1 foot sections brace bottom and side of boards. All could even fit in truck bed without having to tow if preferred
I sure wish there were a proven frame design that I could just construct hopefully able to shrink size for storage. Wondering about using 3/4 black steel pipe with fittings that use hex bolts for fittings. Size can easily change and I believe round twists less but can bend. I have had some success with small pipe inside larger pipe for reducing flex. Could this be better than unidtrut?
With board about 2ft higb on each ladder and 8 ft board with slot frame can change size width as needed. Max size without extension with 8 ft ladders and the 2 ft width of dadders would be almost 8x12 ft. Should provide sturdy connections for belts. Found 8ft ladders for $125 each at Lowes. Have not checked elsewhere.
two 24" wide doors (~60 each) anchor towers on the doors with a couple 2x4s
between them and a board or two to be a rear leg if you want to have it near
vertical without leaning against something.
Maybe but locally tried to find cheap doors and none available. Lots in $309-400 range but cheap ones all show not available. Found 2 8ft ladders at walmart for $108 each. And are fiberglass. Delivery free even. Want to make slidable supports so distance between ladders can be reduced. Maybe angle steel holding vacuum pods to hold boards in place. Angle looks like it should be good. Belts atach to outside legs of ladders wide boards place in-between. Will not have any ends floating in the breeze. I am elderly fighting tremors so this seems to be within my cPabilities. I keep hoping i will get better. But it may not. Even with guide i find i cannot cut straight. See another neurologist in about a month. Feel i can send g code to route what i want done. But my arms and legs just do no cooperate any longer. I am so thankful for those whom help build wheel chair ramps. I used to need to use a power chair.
My toughts on using ladders. End supports for belts too flimsy. Best way to fix is to move aframe to both ends. Ladders are about 75 degress vs 75 deg on maslow frame. Provides a little ore weight on.bit and a little less weight servo motors need to support. The space between ladders is for the canvas. The 2ft width of each ladder os good for needed belt support. Thinking 12 2x4s velcrowed to underside of steps will provide support for canvas. Hinge on ladders should help for a shelf on the back side. With boards about ever foot as height increases i.e. each step. Should give support for for boards.
So I’m now considering that 2 anchors can be on the wall at floor height, simple ring with a carabiner on it and then leaves me only needing 2 more in the floor … Sheet of styrene as a backer board and then panels on top. If I need to hold smaller panels then easy to create some sort of corner retainer with some pins in the base to go into the foam.
The idea of a ring/carabiner anchor brings up a question that I’ve been wondering about for a while.
In all of the photos/videos I’ve seen, it looks like the end of the belt has an eye attached to it that is designed to go over a pin/bolt and pivot around it. I’m guessing that’s a requirement because a carabiner/ring arrangement would effectively add length to the belt. So, for example, if during calibration the Maslow spools out 2 meters of belt, it gets attached via carabiner to a ring, then it pulls in .5 meter to tension the belt, then it seems the spool is 1.5 meters from the mounting point, when it’s really 1.5 meters plus the length of the carabiner/ring assembly.
My plan is to use a utility trailer as my initial frame, it’s 5’x10’ which would constrain my work area a bit, but should be sturdy enough to use the corner posts as my anchors. My initial thought was since it would always be under tension I could just loop some wire cable around the corner posts and connect to the belts with a quick link or carabiner, but then I started thinking about the change in effective belt length. If that’s going to be a problem I’ll probably just weld an attachment point to each corner.
It should be possible to get the code modified to accept an ‘extra length’ on
the belts. I doubt that is in the code at this point, but it sould be reasonable
to add it.
@dlang is right, if there is a demand for it we can add an option enter some extra length in the software. It would be important that you know the size of your carabiner very precisely, but that should be possible.