can you describe exaclty what you mean by the spools binding on the arms? Is the belt getting stuck in the gear? Or is the arm not rotating freely? Or something else?
The belt is not getting stuck. I have never had a belt jam.
The spools rotate around the center of the arm halves (arms rotate around the router and the spools rotate around the center of the arms).
The spools should be able to rotate smoothly when the arms are assembled but of course you cannot check that after assembly due to the motorâs gear ratio preventing them from turning.
You can check that the spools spin smoothly on each arm half before assembling the two halves though. If you place the spool on each arm halve and cannot move it smoothly using your hand, then there is a problem. In my case I found it difficult to rotate them and saw that there was a very produced ridge on the inside circumference of the spools. The fit was worse on one arm half than the other which suggests that the spool is the problem as both arm halves are identical.
In my case the âtightâ side is the one with the gears.
My apologies if I am not explaining this adequately. I will try to upload a video and photos showing the issue.
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Shows one of my binding spools (the âgoodâ side):
Shows the spool after careful sanding and polishing (400 grit - 1000 grit):
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I love the use of gifs - is there a maslow 4 wiki with all this trouble-shooting info - I can see this already on the possible problems page.
I think I will take mine apart and inspect as I remember them being tight but not stuck.
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Thanks for the idea and gifs!
Dano
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I finally figured out my spools were binding too.
I was having problems with calibration and and kept running into âposition error over 15mmâ at the top of my cut. I was also having trouble retracting the belts, having to up the retraction force to 3000. I had this problem with both 4.0 and 4.1 .
I took the arms rings apart and applied machine wax to all bearing surfaces, now my belts retract smoothly with retraction set to 900 and I was able to cut my first sucessful file.
I was going to make a separate post about this buy Rokhal has explained it far better so I just wanted to add my experience.
One tip I discovered: remove the idler gear (to disconnect the motor from the spool) and put the arm back together, if you canât unwind the spool by pulling on the belt then theres too much friction in the arm.
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