Has your build of Maslow 4 resulted in a demonstrated ability to cut multiple projects? I’m especially interested in Super-User experience (such as Bar or Anna). Once you have the system put together and calibrated, have you been able to successfully complete multiple projects?
I had a few issues during assembly that were associated with friction in the belts. Once I had extended/retracted them a few times, they worked better. My first project cut beautifully for about an hour until the router bit came loose. On the second try, it lost communications. On the third attempt, it failed and then couldn’t re-connect with WiFi. Looking for a troubleshooting approach, I found many unsolved issues with other users. It made me wonder, does the 4.1 design work for anyone?
If you have used Maslow as a platform with consistent success, please reply here with your experience to boost my confidence that continued troubleshooting might get me to a practical tool. Thanks,
I think that reliability needs to be our biggest focus for the foreseeable future. We’ve passed the “is it possible for a machine like this to work” threshold and now we need to focus on making it work reliably.
I know that I found a bug last week where a particular bit of gcode would cause the machine to crash consistently so there are absolutely still bugs out there.
In terms of debugging connection issues, the first place to start is the blue light. Is it blinking? If so the machine is connected to the wifi, if not it should be creating a “Maslow” wifi network to connect to.
Hrm. That’s disturbing. I didn’t realize it was failing to cut properly at that kind of rate you seem to be implying. I am still building mine. Is it more complicated cuts? Have you seen a pattern. Thanks for .nc file edit tip. One of the things I do with my 3d printer if it’s acting up on a muti-part print - I’ll print the parts separately. Is that a helpful thing here?
No pattern… I cut this week for two hours straight with no issues. A spare board doesn’t hurt. I now have two Maslows so that when one runs into issues I can keep going and trouble shoot later. They really are cool machines. Unless you have a spare workshop and $20k for something really nice there is no competition.
I’m far from a “super user”… but I have successfully completed multiple projects with good results. Full disclosure: it’s been a big learning curve for me.
When I first received the M4 about a year ago I thought it would be more of a “plug and play” type of tool. I was able to make some good cuts pretty quickly after putting the machine together, but it has been more difficult and time consuming than expected to complete projects. In all fairness @bar has been very honest about the fact that the Maslow 4 is an open source community driven project for makers who like to tinker, build and problem solve. By and large it does work out of the box, but not in the same way as a tool you would buy from a big box store. The community in the forums is the secret sauce. Thanks to many creative and helpful people here, I’ve been able to slowly gain confidence and been inspired to keep experimenting and learning.
After a particularly frustrating result while working on my most recent project I was almost ready to give up. I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, the M4 may not save me time the way that I thought it would, but it does allow me to try things that otherwise I wouldn’t have attempted. For every post here about troubleshooting, there is another post showing what is possible when you finally get it (mostly) all figured out.
I started to look for some of the projects that were most inspiring to me…and there’s so many, here are two worth checking out:
@MrN808 has many posts showcasing some very ambitious projects
@Hughmama posted about an amazing project, with over 100 hours of successful cutting
There is another huge project I remember seeing where someone successfully cut dozens (maybe even 50 or more) of sheets of ply. People are making amazing things with M4 and it only keeps getting better as the DIY community of CNC enthusiasts here continues to discover ways to make the M4 better.
I’d like to comment on my own M4.1’s status and the discussions I’ve seen on the forum. FYI, my hardware is about half assembled and I have all of the materials and space needed to build and install a vertical frame for it. That said, I have been a bit stalled on this project while waiting for the issues under discussion to be resolved.
Part of this delay is caused by the large number of outstanding projects on my ToDo list. However, another part has to do with my concern that some Best Practice(s) may be discovered after I’ve performed the relevant part(s) of the assembly project.
So, I’d really like someone to summarize the currently known Best Practices for the hardware side of things, perhaps pointing to existing information resources. I think this would be helpful to many Maslow n00bs such as myself.
Finally, I’d like to express my appreciation for the work that is being done by folks more brave and/or expert than me. +1!
It is still a DIY robot kit. We’re making pretty steady progress with making it simpler and easier to use with each firmware update, but this is still a first in the world new technology so we are all very much still learning how it works and what features are important.
If we were to compare to 3d printing I’d say we’re in like the makerbot era what it works, but also you have to be pretty into understanding how the machine works and how to work on it.
We’re not yet to the bamboo labs era where anyone can just press print without knowing anything about the underlying technology…but the goal is to get there.
That makes sense!
Assuming you get the machine setup and calibrated correctly, and you get a good grasp on how to set everything up, would you say that you can pretty confidently approach most cuts without random failures? Or maybe a better question would be with your understanding of it all, what is your failure rate on runs? Would you say most projects work well, (user error aside)?
Or do you run into many cases where you have to restart cuts, or the cuts fail completely?
Totally understand that this is an evolving project just curious of it’s current state!
I can’t remember the last time that I actually had a cut fail. The big issue now is just making the setup process easy and simple and clear. Once everything is set up and working right it seems to stay that way pretty well. I think the area that we need to improve on is getting everyone to the point where things are setup and working right as smoothly as possible.
I think it would be really great, and even greater for future marketing, if all successful users were to submit photos and videos of their unique set up for the M4.1 …. I have mine on a bench top, with anchor points on the side walls of my workshop (which just happen to be 12’ apart and pretty parallel) ….. I got my inspiration for this set up from a post I saw on here a few weeks ago ….. Do you have already have (or can you set up) a specific gallery (which is easy to find) for enthusiasts to post to ….. More importantly, easy for would-be enthusiasts to find (ie direct link from the front page of the Maslow CNC website (without the need to navigate the forum)? …….When you finally get the machine up and running (that in itself is a wonderful achievement worthy of sharing), it is so versatile in use and set up, it is a real shame (and missed opportunity) not to let the uninformed world know what its missing!…. So, a gallery of set ups and creations on the front page of the website for the world to easily find!!!
Yeah it would be good to work on a gallery of frames, setups, and projects. It looks like the community garden had trouble with spam. I’d be happy to do anti spam moderation if that would help get it running again.
Yeah. I agree, probably not just formus. If spam is a problem you could have a forum thread and then pull them to be published on a … git page? by a moderator. Does the community garden thing still work? you have that set up already. I put a section in the rough draft of the long form manual for a frame library but that would not be as accessible for people to submit their own to.
Yeah. I agree, probably not just formus. If spam is a problem you could have
a forum thread and then pull them to be published on a … git page? by a
moderator. Does the community garden thing still work? you have that set up
already. I put a section in the rough draft of the long form manual for a
frame library but that would not be as accessible for people to submit their
own to.
I believe that the website itself (or at least large portions of it) are managed
through git. At one point we had/have a ‘where are you located’ page that people
could update via a git pull request. That’s more work than most people are
willing to do, but would be a good way for a small group of volunteers to
maintain a ‘frames’ or ‘projects’ page and link to pictures/threads from the
forum.