very nice, but could you make a new thread for posting projects like this?
otherwise this thread gets cluttered between people orking on getting the Z axis
working and project posts
David Lang
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My Badā¦Iāll move it there!
I have the XL20 pulley which gives 120 mm/min travel speed. The z-axis worked great and was precise at this speed. It was considerably faster that the stock z-axis. The suggested 90xL025 belt was too short, which I did not consider when buying it, so I had to rotate the motor 180 degrees and add as spacer shim under the motor mount to sled connection. Was going to edit the āBuyā instruction page but have not figured out what the belt length should be. Took me a few tries to figure out the setting for z distance in one rotation but I got it to within 1/64 accuracy over 2.5" of total movement.
I made it! I finally read this entire thread! I got my Maslow in the second batch from Bar and Hannah. I never bought the Ridgid router because I read about Z axis issues, so I went straight to the spindle, then got some rails from Amazon and a ballscrew for overkill accuracyā¦and waited until I had room to set up my Maslow.
I got the materials to build my Maslow and after reading this thread I was wondering if the parts would fit on an A sheet so that I can get them printed and then cut the stuff with a router by hand. I may have to end up buying a router anywayā¦oh well.
Thank you for all of your hard work and all of the awesome pictures!
if you have a rail/spindle set, just set them up rather than doing the
meticulous Z. the meticulous Z is an attempt at a cheap way to get what you
already have.
David Lang
I didnāt buy it as a set. I got the spindle from one source and then rails and ballscrew together from another. I will still need to mount the rails to an upright, make a plate and clamps for my spindle, and attach the ballscrew nut to the carriage to make everything move.
This is a picture of all of the parts that I have. Iām realizing now that I will really just be borrowing heavily from the Meticulous Z and creating my own thing because all of my parts are different. Which also means I can make sure that all of the parts fit on Sheet A sized printsā¦enjoy the pictures? I will make a new thread for my build when I get underway!
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I plan on ultimately upgrading my machine with a spindle similiar to you. The key here is that the rotational centerline of the spindle needs to be the correct distance from the carriage plate and spine or you wonāt be centered on the ring/linkage system. This distance is 70mm in my model. You will probably need some spacers between the spindle clamp and the carriage plate to ensure they fit well.
I do not yet have any templates for the new versions of the assembly. There should be some PDFās and DXFās in the community garden, but those are for the old version that doesnāt include useful things like threaded insert locations.
If youāre handy with Fusion 360, you could easily make drawings from my nested parts and print those out 1:1.
I am not handy at CAD/CAM unfortunately. I havenāt found them to be intuitive for me. I have a copy of Solidworks and I can work my way through drawing it up in that. I donāt have access to a surface plate and height gage but I think I can find the spindle centerline on my granite counter top and a pair of calipers. This may actually be a good project to learn making an assembly rather than the chain from my text book. Then I can model everything with my Z axis going through the spindle center line. Iād imagine thatās how you did it for yours?
Thank you for keeping at this! Slogging through this whole thread will really help me adapt it to the parts I purchased and not having this discussion would have led to me making more mistakes Iām sure.
try different CAD systems, there are a few different ways that they work and you
may find one that āclicksā with you.
David Lang
I need one more like MasterCAM and less like an artist made it. Iām left handed but have crap artistic skills. The Solidworks books I have are ok. They show drawing things and then dimensioning them to make sure it all fits but I always come up with conflicts I donāt understand giving me warnings. A classroom setting would have been best for me to learn but since moving to Hawaii recently that is less likely to happen anytime soon.
there are a lot of youtube videos going over how to use onshape and fusion360
(just to name a couple common ones that are not artist focused)
David Lang
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CAD can be tricky, but YouTube is a fantastic resource here. There are tons of tutorials that will get you going. Once you have the fundamentals, the next best thing is practice. If you can come up with a set of simple projects than you can work on your skills with something that interests you. That interest is very important to absorbing the information.
You shouldnāt need to go that far. I would measure the diameter of the spindle where it mates with the clamp, vernier calipers will be accurate enough. Then you just need to measure the short distance of the clamp, from the inside of the bore to the face that bolts to the carriage. This you could use the depth gauge on your calipers and set the clamp on that granite countertop of yours. While obviously you want to get as accurate measurements as possible, you donāt need a metrology lab here. 
And yes, I made a sketch that located the spindle centerline on the model origin, and drew in the basic carriage geometry around it.
Funny, I have an artistic background and the biggest hurdle for me was getting more engineering-minded to grasp the big concepts that modern CAD like SolidWorks and Fusion as based on.
Iām probably just making excuses for being older and not grasping things as easily as I once did. I need to have a quiet space that I can focus and having a two year old and a studio apartment didnāt make that easy at all. Now that Iām in my house I have the spaceā¦and more projects lol
@SnailPowered: No worries, pretty much all CAD platforms have a pretty steep learning curve. Getting DXF and PDF 2D CAD files together is on my to-do list, but I wouldnāt hold my breath waiting for me to get them done. I do try and put at least a few hours a week into working on this, but progress is fairly slow.
Speaking of progress!
Those waiting for NC files for the fully Maslowed version, I just uploaded the files tonight. While untested on a Maslow, the simulations all look good to me. Until we confirm that they are proven programs, use them only under direct supervision.
The only thing missing from those nests are the spindle clamps. Until I can work out something better, Iām not including files to make wooden clamps because of the issues weāve seen for them. I will gladly 3D print PLA clamps for anyone interested. Price is $40 shipped anywhere in the US. Not sure how expensive international shipping would be, but we could probably figure it out.
Well, I watched the three included tutorials for the OnShape mobile app and it sure looks like MS Paint for CAD in terms of ease of use. I will take some measurements of my parts when I get home tonight and make a plan for assembling my Z axis. I think my motion components and spindle were about $200 so Iām not saving any money over the router, but I WILL have a ball screw for adjustment 
Apparently I was feeling rich and my ballscrew and and linear rails cost me closer to $150 with shipping and taxes. Iām pretty sure I wasted moneyā¦but at least I can share what overkill on these components looks like?
I mean, with a ball screw you should be able to see real high precision in the Z axis, at least by Maslow standards. If you donāt already have one, a drop indicator would be very useful to you to calibrate it. And those rails look like they shouldnāt have any issues with deflection. 
I figure the spindle was probably a fair percentage of that $200. Honestly, I think youāre better off with a proper, purpose-built spindle. Iāve been looking at getting one that has the same power rating as the Rigid that Iām currently using. I probably donāt need all that power for my setup, but if I can do full-depth plunge cuts with compression bits, itās gonna be worth it.
Looking forward to seeing progress on your build!
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I increased the ratio in my build and havenāt had any negative attributes at all. Donāt remember the ratio off hand. Love the speed though and it has worked well for v carving.
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Very, very basic 2D CAD files have been added to the repo. The layers have not yet been organized in a way that is conducive to CAM. More work is to be done there. Also still need to make 1:1 scaled PDF templates for parts. Still so much work to be done, but so little time.
I (finally) finished up the work I needed to do on my siding! I am so relieved to have that behind me! 
I have a short little window now between that and getting back to working on my plow truck before Iām going to need to use it for winter, so Iām trying to bring my Maslow back to life.
This week I did manage to get a new, adjustable top beam mounted up on my frame, so I can now pick up where I left off on post 206 with my spindle clamps. 
Tonight, I got my linkages mounted:
And my Z-axis motor mounted:
The motor bracket I cut on the waterjet at work, and used a press brake to get the 90* bend it in. Made it a breeze to get a good tension on the timing belt. I used 10-24 threaded inserts into the plywood, because I will be adjusting that tension a lot when it comes time to test different ratios.
Speaking of ratios, I am currently running the set of pulleys that give me closest to 1:1 from what I have on hand, just to get it up and running. The motor is running a 40 tooth pulley, and the leadscrew a 30 tooth pulley. This gives me a ratio of 0.75.
Some weirdness happened with my calibration attempts. My current Z-axis pitch is set to -9.48, but Iām not fully convinced thatās 100% dialed in. Iāve gotten it accurate to Ā± 0.1mm across 8mm. I only have 10mm of stroke on my test indicator, and I didnāt want to max it out on a move. The weird part is that I saw a small amount of variation in the move commands. I ended up bouncing up and down a little bit on my pitch as I went. Iām not sure what the resolution of the motor is with my current gearing, but my indicator was picking up errors as much as 0.06mm in a move command at 8mm. Thatās only 0.75% error as in, less than a percentage. That error translates to slightly more distance in a 20 mm deep cut, like a sheet of plywood. If you use a retract height of 0.250", or 6.35mm, thatās almost 0.2mm of error on that entire cut.
So, I have three questions:
-
Does the Z-Axis motor have a lower resolution than my indicator? I looked for something in the spec, but didnāt see anything listing resolution.
-
How significant would this error be at a more extreme gear ratio? Iām guessing that it would be a factor of the ratio, but Iām not learned enough to calculate what that would be.
-
Assuming that I do want higher resolution (maybe later on, if I think itās a priority), would it be worth getting a better (higher resolution) servo motor?
All that being said, Iām hoping next week to get chains hung and the machine calibrated, so I might soon have a functioning Maslow again! 
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The Z axis has so much more resolution than is needed that you could have a 10:1
gear ratio and not notice any loss in accuracy (you could probably get away with
a 100:1 ratio)
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