Been watching the progress of the Maslow design, VERY impressive! I especially appreciate the community involvement, and the willingness of the originators to allow others to contribute. The way design SHOULD be!
One question and a couple of suggestions…
First, wouldn’t using a smaller diameter router bit (say 1/8" diameter) allow for faster cutting? Seems like you are forced to run slower and less deep because you are “hogging out” so much at one time. Or would stresses perpendicular to the spinning bit (pressure from cutting) tend to break a thinner shaft? Just wondering…
Second; has any thought been given to “alternative cutter” sleds? Could you replace the router sled with;
1) a thin “hot wire” mounting for cutting foam? (Might require a thin “sacrificial” foam under thicker work
material to prevent wire from contacting plywood bed…)
2) a soldering iron tip for wood burning images? (Keep a fire extinguisher handy for THAT one!)
3) a pen grip for drawing sharpie designs on sheet metal or glass for additional work?
Still picking up pop cans to fund my own Maslow, but in the meantime I’ll keep an eye out here.
First, wouldn’t using a smaller diameter router bit (say 1/8" diameter) allow
for faster cutting? Seems like you are forced to run slower and less deep
because you are “hogging out” so much at one time. Or would stresses
perpendicular to the spinning bit (pressure from cutting) tend to break a
thinner shaft? Just wondering…
in general, a larger bit can cut deeper, and a larger bit can remove a larger
chip in a single cut, so if you are needing to remove material, a larger bit
does it faster.
small bits are also much easier to break.
people are successfully using bits of all different sizes, some swear by 1/8"
bits, some by 1/4" bits, some by larger bits. there is no one right answer.
Second; has any thought been given to “alternative cutter” sleds? Could you replace the router sled with;
1) a thin “hot wire” mounting for cutting foam? (Might require a thin “sacrificial” foam under thicker work
material to prevent wire from contacting plywood bed…)
2) a soldering iron tip for wood burning images? (Keep a fire extinguisher handy for THAT one!)
3) a pen grip for drawing sharpie designs on sheet metal or glass for additional work?
yes to all of the above. you always want a sacraficial layer under your
workpiece (you don’t want to cut up your frame)
several people have done machines with pens, at least two have posted ways to
make a pen holder that slides in place of the router motor (so you use the same
Z axis)
About 5 years ago I came up with (and started building) a large scale vertical plotter to use spray paint to put murals on exterior walls of buildings… I got pretty bogged down in the math and programming at the time (neither of which are my strong suit) so it never really got off the ground. But I’d love to modify a maslow to do that now!
-Logan
Drag knives which fit router collets are available, so I believe one would only have to get one and play with it to find the correct cutting speed and depth/pressure.
I plan to try 1/8" Rotozip bits when I get my Maslow. They’re easy to find locally and very affordable - to the point where I feel I’d be foolish not to try them. I can’t imagine cutting large pockets, rabbets or dados with them, but for profiles I think it’s worth the fiddling to get such inexpensive cutters.
I LOVE the idea of a hot wire, but keeping it under tension would be a puzzle. That’s based on zero homework beyond some googling from a while ago. The home built ones I saw looked like archery bows (more or less).
EDIT foam cutting pens exist and are cheap enough to party with EDIT
A plasma cutter would be very very fun and useful. Back when the world was flat, I operated a CNC Oxy-Acetylene cutter. The trick would be to stay on top of the material warping from the heat. The steel likes to lift and warp and move around from the heat and internal stresses from the rolling processes. That would be the problem to chase and solve with a sled mounted cutter
Just off the cuff… I would try a soldering iron base (to provide the heat) and insert an aluminum (or possibly stainless) nail. Find the right speed to maintain temp and the stiffness on the nail would eliminate the need for a tensioned wire, no?
PLASMA CUTTER??? CRIKEY, you shot WAY past me in a hurry! lol
Just off the cuff… I would try a soldering iron base (to provide the heat) and insert an aluminum (or possibly stainless) nail. Find the right speed to maintain temp and the stiffness on the nail would eliminate the need for a tensioned wire, no?
Given the cost of a purpose-built foam cutting “pen” on Amazon (that I only just googled an hour ago) it would be tough to justify home building one. $20-30 gets you one that works. Unless you already have the iron kicking around… Then again, the soldering iron is a multi-tasker.
I would love to see that build! I made a fair number of foam RC airplanes back in the day and cutting out the parts by hand was always tedious as can be especially when everything would break in a crash
Not sure how it would go for sure, but given the cost of a pen being around $20US, it might be worth pursuing eventually. Definitely one for the half-bakery.
Hmmmm… I like using the small bit (in a dremel?), foam shouldn’t generate nearly the lateral force that routing wood does, and with the right speed, might be easier than rigging the “hot nail”. Haven’t looked into cutting pens, but I will now. Thanks.
Cuts like the proverbial hot knife through butter. We did some insulating around the time I was using my Zenbot Mini and had a lot of foam scraps. With a 100W 20K rpm spindle and about any 1/8" endmill out of the box it would cut as fast the the little guy would move, with a good surface finish. It said it was moving at 600ipm but it might have been exaggerating, I wasn’t as familiar with maximum speeds back then. The only problems were when I tried to cut deeper than the sharp part of the bit when it would start tearing the foam.
I found one of my test blocks in the moosecave, nice surface and edge finish, only thing not perfect was trying to cut details smaller then the bit diameter
EDIT