Is Metal Maslow still in business? @Metalmaslow
I found their website and ordered the 2021 kit, received an order confirmation, but nothing since? I realize in the age of Amazon we may be too accustomed to instant gratification, but I am a little alarmed at the lack of communication?
Tried their email - no response.
Tried the phone # on the site - discontinued.
Tried the form on their site - no response.
Tried Facebook Messenger - no response.
If they are still in business - can anyone attest to how long it took to receive your kit?
They’re pretty slow to ship generally. I’ve never heard of anyone not getting their kit, but there have been a lot of complaints about them taking a long time to ship things and to respond to emails 
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I ordered one a few weeks back and had the exact experience regarding communication. It can be alarming to pay that much money and then not get a response. In my case I had a question regarding what power supply they recommend since the write up on the kit says you have to provide one. I never did get an answer but was surprised when there was one in the kit. I would say I got the kit in maybe 3 weeks, perhaps a little less. I did get an email when it was shipped.
I’m actually on here right now trying to find a photo somewhere that would explain what the bent tangs on the motor mounts are intended for? If you noticed there are several different sleds on the website but you will get something different even and there are NO photos of the unit assembled. I have not reached out to them for help because at this point I’m just going to do it my way, especially after I noticed some extremely odd uses of T nuts in some of the sled photos on the site.
Jerry
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I made a video of my build on youtube if that is of any help. At the time I had the linkage arms on the sled and have since put the ring on. If you want @metalmaslow to respond, you just put the @ in front of his name and he will get a notification. I’m not familiar with what his shipping times are these days. I ordered my sled as an upgrade when covid first started and there were some pretty serious delays at the time. His prices can’t be beat, but with most things (good, fast, cheap) you only get to pick 2. Hang in there.
Correction: There is a small cooling fan included which requires 12v. Perhaps there is are a couple pins on the arduino board that you could tap but I could not find anything on that anywhere. I happened to have just purchased a power supply for another project and it works great. I got it for about $5 with free shipping on ebay like a month ago. Hope this helps you. Heres a photo. What is nice about this one, and the reason I purchased it is that it has a terminal block so you don’t have to solder the wires together. The fan label says 12v 0.2a in case you can’t read it.
Thanks!
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For what it’s worth, here is a link to a recent post regarding MM orders:
https://forums.maslowcnc.com/t/metal-maslow-order/12697/12
Scroll to the bottom to read his response. Like @bar said, their repsonse time can be hit or miss but I believe that eventualy everyone gets their stuff. I don’t have any direct experience with ordering from them but I get the impression that they ship in batches.
Here is the link to @orob 's video on his sled build.
https://youtu.be/x1uhjihMlco
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Thanks for posting the link. I meant to put that in the previous post and was going to edit it… what a time saver!
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I think MM sells more than one sled version but I’m not sure. I purchased what was called the 2021 kit and this is what mine looks like:
that is the C beam z-axis kit. I have the gantry z axis kit and you can see the slots for the gantry in your sled near the vacuum connection, so I think the sleds are the same. I haven’t seen an unfinished ring before though. I’ve seen blue and black.
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Thank-you all for your responses. I guess my Prime Shipping self will just need to be patient… 
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I ordered one on 1-18 from his website, nothing but the initial email until 1-24 when I got a shipping notice, it arrived three days later. Been building the kit but as others have said the instructions are not for what you receive. I have things mostly figured out but also have questions on the motor mounts. I sent him an email and am awaiting a response. Everything looks like it will be great, it’s just been updated so much that the instructions no longer match at all.
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I think the rectangular holes are for attaching the chain end but if you do that, then you will need a sprocket out in space for the chain to come back to this point. I have seen pictures where guys use an S hook in that sprocket and then attach bungees to it. For the MM the idea is to use a counterweight. I feel like I"m on the Food Channels “Chopped” show and I have a basket of ingredients, all of which I paid for, some of which I will never use.
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no worries. just trying to make sure your efforts are put to good use.
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My kit is the same as this. Is it as safe assumption that I will be left with a substantial amount of left over fasteners - due to the kit supporting multiple styles of metal maslow sled?
In addition - did you need to countersink all the sled base screws yourself or am I missing some critical part here - should this style have the HDPE skirt around the edge?
Yes, I had a TON of left over fasteners. Also, I got 2 bags of hardware (I think by mistake).
Yes, I countersunk the holes from the bottom side. Alternatively, you could replace the fasteners with pan head screws and save the trouble since you would need a countersink bit cause regular drill bits are not the correct angle. I have one but it struggled cause its seen better days.
The T-nuts made zero sense to me as I saw how they were used in a photo on the website. I finally decided they would work best if you installed them from the top for the HDPE plastic. There are 2 problems as I found in my case. The HDPE has countersunk holes. There were some screws in my bag that had the same tpi so I decided to use those through the HDPE, into the T-nuts. This however presents another problem, the T-nut barrel diameter will not fit into the HDPE holes. My solution was to set the depth on my drill press and drill them out a little larger on the non-countersunk side of the HDPE. This then allowed the HDPE to slip over the T-nut barrel and the HDPE layed flat…sort of…on the bottom of the sled.
So I alluded to a problem with the HDPE laying flat on the bottom of the sled. If you look at photos on the MM website, and you may have to look hard, you will see that this HDPE is supposed to be made into a circle of about 15" diameter. When you do this, you will see which holes must be intended for this (yes there are way, way more holes than are used). PROBLEM: Hopefully your HDPE was bent for shipping along the correct axis and is not distorted. Mine, after installing with the T-nuts and modifying the holes to allow the barrel of the nut to slip into the HDPE about 1/16", everything looked pretty good (although it was not a very round shape). However, mine was WAVY and did not lay tight to the sled metal. Now maybe I’m a perfectionist but this and the fact it looked all wonky bugged the heck out of me.
Solution? I ended up purchasing a piece of 1/2" teflon rod. I cut this into 4 long pieces with 4 shorter corners. The corner cuts were mitered 22.5 degrees. I had to drill new holes and I used sheet metal screws after predrilling the teflon.
I also couldn’t make sense of how the weights were supposed to be installed? Sticky backed tape and zip ties? Anyways, I decided to bolt them on which is secure and easy to remove as needed.
One other change I plan is to replace the wing nuts for the ring adjustment with nyloc nuts. Wing nuts will come loose under vibration I’m pretty sure, unless you use pliers and once you do that, why not just use a socket on a nyloc nut?
Jerry
Aha! Therein lies the issue - my kit did not have any HDPE ring - which caused me much confusion! Thank-you for clearing that up!
OK that explains it. Yeah I though it would come with a slot on the side and wrap around it but I got what was a straight piece that was bent to fit the square box. The set it took was at the wrong axis to the holes so it was wavy when I installed it. Also, I pre-wrapped it around something round but no matter how hard I tried it ended up looking like a demented hula hoop. It looks in the pictures like an older version had the rod drilled on the ends and there was probably a pin that helped it make a better circle. I was going to do that to mine and I would have been happy if it had only laid flat on the sled.