I’m new to Maslow forums, and I am planning to back the 4.1. I’m wondering what’s the minimum anchor point setup one can use. I read that the machine performs calibration loops to a certain size. Can I anchor the belts much closer in? What are the minimum anchor point distances?
What if I wanted to set this up on a 40 x 40-inch or 40 x 48-inch table and run small jobs in the middle? I know that Maslow is designed for large-format cutting, but I just want to understand what’s the lower limit.
I¢m new to Maslow forums, and I am planning to back the 4.1. I¢m wondering
what¢s the minimum anchor point setup one can use. I read that the machine
performs calibration loops to a certain size. Can I anchor the belts much
closer in? What are the minimum anchor point distances?
What if I wanted to set this up on a 40 x 40-inch or 40 x 48-inch table and
run small jobs in the middle? I know that Maslow is designed for large-format
cutting, but I just want to understand what¢s the lower limit.
There is not a lot of experience with non-standard sizes, but it should work.
you are best off if you can stay in the green area, as you go outside it (either
into red or white areas) some of the belts will effectively be a bit shorter
than the maslow thinks they are, the further out of the green area you go, the
more error in the belt length you will get.
As you go to really small frames, the angle of the belt from the arm to the
anchors will start to be more of a problem, so if you do a small frame, then you
should raise the anchors. I developed this anchor to support a small frame (I
printed a set, but haven’t gotten around to setting it up)
What the calibration is doing is trying to figure out exactly where the anchors
are. It then saves those positions in the maslow.yaml file. So after you get a
good calibration, save a copy of the file and when you use the maslow on that
frame again, you can upload that file rather than doing a new calibration.
@dlang thanks for your extended answer! Even more so for your calculator link. I’ve seen a spreadsheet somewhere on the forum, but your calculator is a) visual, b) easier to use and c) less prone to error. @bar your hands are full, but would it be an idea to integrate the tool in the official project documentation (if okay by @dlang)? You could start out by just linking to Langs site.
@dlang and I disagree about how much information that spreadsheet actually conveys. I regularly cut in areas that the spreadsheet says shouldn’t work well without issues. In theory the arms do contact the uprights at those points, but in practice the small angle approximation means that it isn’t really a significant issue. I think that there are other issues which have a larger impact on the cutting performance.
There is an integrated view in the user interface which will show red and green areas where the performance will be better or worse, but the calculations there are based on belt tension and we should probably revisit how they are being displayed especially for horizontal orientation.
It depends a lot on how far outside the green area you go and how much accuracy
you need. It’s non-linear, so going just a little outside the area probably is
not noticable (unless you are cutting things that need to fit in each other)
We really need to have someone do a lot of accuracy testing.