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!