- Never Worked
- Worked with Significant Difficulty
- Worked with A Little Difficulty
- Worked Great Out Of The Box
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I only speak for myself when I write this, but I have been reading your posts over the last week while I’ve also been struggling with setting up the Maslow and making my way through calibration issues. You seem really frustrated!!
From what I have read of your posts, the Maslow community, especially @dlang and @bar, have been amazingly responsive to your questions. I get that this is a somewhat expensive product and it has its fair share of frustrations in both the hardware and software side. But, I think you and I look at this project very differently.
This product is just a very cool thing to be a part of. A CNC machine that can cut a full 4x8 sheets costs in the range of $20-$30K. For less than $1K, you get to be a part of this community trying to figure out how to get this product up and running. It’s not an Off-the-Shelf, Out-of-the-Box machine. It’s clearly still a work in progress and getting better as time goes on. There is nothing else like this on the market!
I hope that you can be patient with @bar and understand that the community is going to work to figure out the small programming issues and complicated math behind getting a machine like this running reliably for everyone. To everyone that has been contributing to this project, thanks! I appreciate all of the hard work that has gone into it so far!
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Yes, I’m frustrated.
Yes, I appreciate the support from everyone.
However, I’m not alone. Many people on this forum have been unable to calibrate or can calibrate only after significant difficulty. That is an issue. It doesn’t seem like there is any consistent reason why some of these work and some don’t. I am using a very standard configuration (anchor bolts in a concrete floor, standard 4.0 machine, dewalt router).
Just trying to get a sense. Is it 1% of us who have this problem? 10%? 50%? Is there any commonality among the people who can’t get theirs to calibrate. Is it a software issue? Does your frame have to be perfectly square in order to work? Is there a certain level of skew that will work beyond which calibration will always fail? All of that data is good and important to making the process better for everyone. Everything else is just guessing. It all starts with identifying how common the problem is.
There seem to be a number of issues with the machine, and these issues take time to get solved. I still hope they will all be solved. In the mean time, I am using my machine for small parts, and sometimes large parts where the accuracy is not too important.
I had trouble with calibration too, and eventually concluded that it wasn’t working for me. I then measured my frame and checked that in CAD, put those values in the Yaml, and not bothered with the calibration after that. That worked for me. And changing the orde of the arms as I’m using vertical at 25 degrees. Hope this helps, Arjen
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It’s a Kickstarter campaign and one that required the unit to be fielded to test and identify problems. This has been eluded to since the beginning.
Keep in mind that Bar’s earlier maslow (not the M2 clone) had it’s kinks in the beginning and evolved into a pretty reliable and accurate machine. I still use mine today and even disassembled and reassembled after a move.
Bar has proven himself with the follow-though on the original. The M4 will get there, we just have to be patient. I would try to manually calibrate and if that doesn’t work. Maybe take a break until more bugs get worked out.
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Yeah I wish I could just use the manual calibration method and get cutting but that doesn’t work either 
I’ve got my measurements down to the millimeter. Plugged those in, add a router bit and. . .the machine tells me my center point is too far off and has to calibrate. 
Try auto-calibrating and it either won’t resolve or it finishes and I try adding a bit and have the same problem as above.
Great that so far every respondent has their machine working - if this trend continues then that tells me that there’s something wrong with mine alone.
Maybe someone on the forum that got theirs going can reach out and help. I have for the classic and webcontrol multiple times. But can’t help on the M4 since we do not have it up and going in the shop yet.
I know it’s frustrating. But as Yoda would say, “Have faith in Bar we must”
Have you tried jogging with no bit and the router down to set z-stop?
Also check the z-offset of every anchor with the yaml
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My machine started working when I lost my fear of taking it apart and realized that most of the problems were my own fault, due to not understanding the hardware (well, not the software either; I’m incredibly new to this) and underestimating the value of good assembly, which is my sole responsibility. At first, I thought it was an expensive toy that didn’t work, but when I included myself in the equation, the results changed, but not before I got a few gray hairs.
Maslow isn’t automatic; she knows the world we show her. I consider her a manual robot.
Not saying I’m infallible, but I’ve disassembled and re-assembled, checking magnets, etc. My assembly looks correct. My frame is as recommended (horizontal, anchors in concrete floor). Flex is very low. Frame size is good (12x8). I’ve followed the videos and everyone’s suggestions. I’ve uploaded video of my process so people could see if I was doing something wrong. I’ve uploaded logs. No one can figure out why mine doesn’t work. It’s just a paperweight at the moment.
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