Thank you! You saved me and my machine

THANK YOU!!!

I purchased the Maslow from MakersMade 3 Mondays ago (Monday before Thanksgiving). I’m a high-geometry teacher in Texas and have a custom woodworking business on the side (more like an profiting hobby).

Building the stand based off the instructions was incredibly easy with only 2-3 mistakes because the directions were unclear. However, once the maslow box arrived it was 2.5 weeks of pure frustration and hell. One issue after another. Windows vs. Mac (I’m a pure Mac guy), and ground control wouldn’t install on my Mac. Then I find out that ground control is outdated (I read “use webcontrol” instead). I had no clue how to install webcontrol on my Mac. Bought a cheap but new Windows laptop. It didn’t have the graphics driver to run the software either. Bought another Windows laptop (and don’t tell anyone, I actually love the touch screen on it - I hate Windows though).

Then it was the actual machine. I had a dewalt router already. But I couldn’t figure out how to get the z-axis to operate it because it doesn’t operate off a twist bolt like the Rigid. So I bought the rigid. Then I couldn’t get the z-axis to properly move the rigid up and down. So I removed the rigid’s bolt and fixed an actual 1/2 inch bolt and nut to drive the router up and down with the z-axis.

Then I couldn’t get the chains to stay on the sprockets during the original setup. Then it became that the chains were spooling around themselves on the sprockets.

2.5 weeks of this frustration. Probably 40+ hours were spent trying to figure it out. I wanted to tear it all down and throw it in the road, but I was too far in with the $$$.

I read and read and read more of these forums/posts about how you have tinkered with your setups. I took your ideas and designs and I am excited to say that for 2.5 hours last night I ran my machine with only minor issues (sled doesn’t stay flush to work material - top pulls away when going towards the top of the work material).

Thank you for posting your troubles and solutions. They have helped this amatuer out greatly!!!

3 Likes

glad to hear things are better. your experience sounds pretty typical actually so……. welcome to the club?? i guess??? :smile:

it sounds like you still have a sled that is either still out of balance or the chains are still not parallel with the work surface. my guess is you still need to raise your ring a bit more.

either way, good job working through the problems.

1 Like

I plan to lower the brackets down this evening after school to see if that will help.

Two of the things I did that I learned from this forum was:

  • moved the excess chain to the front of the top bar instead of the back.
  • removed the instructed bungee cord set up and use a long cord between the two chains. I think this helped the most with getting the chains to stop spooling.

not sure i understand which brackets you are referring to.

sorry is my only response. this device has been out about 5 years. one shouldn’t have this many issues setting it up at this point in time. You’d be much better off with a smaller dewalt router and a dedicated z axis. Using a 1/2" bolt is slow because pitch is too low.

Guess I need to work on marketing because our kit www.metalmaslow.com solves most of these issues and costs less than other kits.