One belt won't retract, Z axis won't work, and error #9

Troubleshooting
1

Greetings all!

First off, I’m Loving cutting with my M4. It’s awesome to see it go and my students love it. I’m on my second student furniture job when things went very sideways. I was cutting on the section that is in the upper left of the picture when the sled started doing the nose rocking thing.

image
image940×696 122 KB

This spot is a little over 3 feet from the left side and 3 feet down from the top, so I would hope we are not running into the problem of being too close to a side.

It then disconnected from Wifi. I stopped the job, retract, reset z stop, reset z home, extend, tighten, send back to the home, and started a new gcode that eliminated already cut toolpaths.
I had to up the retraction force to 1700 or 1800 from the 1000 that it was at to get the upper left belt to retract this time. I noticed the upper left servo motor kind of wondering about. like the end was moving in a circle relative to the paddle while the others didn’t move. Also I notice a terrible sound and a strange vibration coming through the belt coming from that paddle when I was extending the belts. Has anyone seen this? I’m guessing this has to do with the servo being loose.

Maslow-serial 2-26 @ 152 PM.log (4.0 KB)

Maslow-serial 2-26@ 237 PM.log (4.0 KB)

I looked at another post from dlang and he advised that the inner spool was loose and that was causing the problem. I will be looking into this tonight.

Then when I was getting it set up a 3rd time, I couldn’t control the Z axis. I kept getting Error 9. On another form I saw that error indicated gcode was still running. There was no gcode loaded, the green box said jog, and the state was unknown. It had been power cycled since trying to run it. So I took it down, and I noticed a strange sound. the Z axis motors were moving ever so slightly, but way after I had commanded them to. Also they were both hot.

Maslow-serial 2-26@ 305PM.log (4.0 KB)

At this point I am going to take the thing home and dismantle it. Maybe when I get home the steppers will have cooled off and it will be controllable for me again. I will be moving to the turtle clamp base since my hardware finally came in for it, as well as upgrading to 1.18. However if any of this rings a bell and anyone has any pointers for me on how to fix them, I would love to hear your expertise.

Thank you all for your help,

Update: I realized I needed to travel and wanted to take the bit out. So I gave it another shot to move the Z axis. It moved and had no issues.
Maslow-serial2-26 @354PM.log (3.7 KB)

Thank you all!

1 Like
2

Sounds like you might have a loose motor on that arm.
You will also get a Error 9 if you try to move Z in Alarm mode. Click on Alarm to turn it off. Sorry I see you had Jog on that indicator. Did you have a red LED lite on the board?

3

Ian,

Thanks for the reply.
I will check on the loose motor arm tonight. I may put another drop of lock tight on that one. Would that have caused it to disconnect from WIFI and stop the cut?

As for the error 9: No, the lights were green and blue. When I read what error 9 means I was hoping that by clicking alarm or by deleting the gcode it would clear it, but no luck. It didn’t have a gcode loaded and was already in jog. I cycled the power on the Maslow and there was no change. All I know is that when I tried again about 25 minutes later it worked with no issues. But I had cycled the power on the Maslow again, and restarted the computer. So yeah. Strange.

I wish I had a longer USB A to USB C cable. Then I would have been recording in fluidterm and that would maybe give the missing info. But when there is this much movement of the sled I don’t want to risk it pulling the cable out of the Maslow or my computer.

Thank you again!

4

James Glaser wrote:

I will check on the loose motor arm tonight. I may put another drop of lock
tight on that one. Would that have caused it to disconnect from WIFI and stop
the cut?

we have had a couple reports of the bolts connecting the gearbox to the motor
being loose from the factory.

if this caused the belts to not be what the machine expected, that could cause a
failure (followed by a disconnect)

note that v1.18 (released yesterday) has some fixes to reduce some wifi errors
(or to log them better if they happen, but you need to connect via USB rather
than the network to see the logs)

As for the error 9: No, the lights were green and blue. When I read what
error 9 means I was hoping that by clicking alarm or by deleting the gcode it
would clear it, but no luck. It didn¢t have a gcode loaded and was already in
jog. I cycled the power on the Maslow and there was no change. All I know is
that when I tried again about 25 minutes later it worked with no issues. But
I had cycled the power on the Maslow again, and restarted the computer. So
yeah. Strange.

what state was it reporting? unless it’s ‘ready to cut’ you won’t be able to
move.

I wish I had a longer USB A to USB C cable. Then I would have been recording
in fluidterm and that would maybe give the missing info. But when there is
this much movement of the sled I don¢t want to risk it pulling the cable out
of the Maslow or my computer.

hopefully we can troubleshoot it well enough without this, but it would help.

David Lang

5

Good morning,

I disassembled the upper left motor paddle in question, as well as the lower left that has never been a problem as a control to compare it to.

I found no additional flexibility in the motors. Gearbox was still solidly connected to the motor, motor still solid to the paddle body. The motor shaft had no more flexibility than the other I compared it to. The idler gear and its bearings were solid as well. I could find no reason for the movement of the motor body other than the whole paddle just flexing under the strain of pulling the belt.

I did notice that it was very difficult to move the belt by hand. Even pushing on the spool directly took some effort. This is concerning because I spent all of Sunday taking the paddles apart, sanding all the parts, and then used silicone spray lubricant to lubricate it. I see no debris that would cause it to be jammed, but it is certainly jammed. I sanded them with 120, 220, 380, then 440 sand paper to smooth them out. Am I going to have to do this again will all the paddles? They were all pretty smooth when I put them together and tested them, they all moved pretty freely. But now even the one that was my control paddle is much stiffer than it was.

I’m going to clean up and re-lubricate this paddle, but I think I will try this dry lube instead of the silicone. I am hopeful to not have to sand them anymore. Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

Thank you,

6

The early 4.1 kits had a very tight fit between the spool and the arm. sanding
the inside of the spool with high grit sandpaper until it turns freely is a good
idea (Bar changed the molds for the spools to give a little more clearance
later)

There have also been reports of the plastic of the arm distoring slightly at the
screw holes (the both heads and the nuts cause the plastic to bulge)

you really want the spools to turn freely on both halves of the arm before
reassembling things.

David Lang

Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:32:10 +0000
From: James Glaser notifications@maslowcnc.discoursemail.com
Reply-To: Maslow CNC Forums
incoming+4a1def08d4849eb94deada6a3a618255@maslowcnc.discoursemail.com
To: david@lang.hm
Subject: [Maslow CNC] [Troubleshooting] One belt won’t retract,
Z axis won’t work, and error #9

Good morning,

I disassembled the upper left motor paddle in question, as well as the lower left that has never been a problem as a control to compare it to.

I found no additional flexibility in the motors. Gearbox was still solidly connected to the motor, motor still solid to the paddle body. The motor shaft had no more flexibility than the other I compared it to. The idler gear and its bearings were solid as well. I could find no reason for the movement of the motor body other than the whole paddle just flexing under the strain of pulling the belt.

I did notice that it was very difficult to move the belt by hand. Even pushing on the spool directly took some effort. This is concerning because I spent all of Sunday taking the paddles apart, sanding all the parts, and then used silicone spray lubricant to lubricate it. I see no debris that would cause it to be jammed, but it is certainly jammed. I sanded them with 120, 220, 380, then 440 sand paper to smooth them out. Am I going to have to do this again will all the paddles? They were all pretty smooth when I put them t
ogether and tested them, they all moved pretty freely. But now even the one that was my control paddle is much stiffer than it was.

7

I agree with this, this is pretty important.