I have a 10 ft interstate trailer, and am interested to see if I could fit the Maslow inside. The wall size inside the trailer is 9’10" long by 5’6" tall. Is the available height too short to make it worth the effort? I see that people have made 7ft tall Maslows, so I’m pretty sure I could make it work if I could be happy with a work area only 2.5 feet tall, but I would like more. I’d love to turn the “Mobile Man Cave” into a “Mobile Manufacturing Cave”.
I’ve just purchased my kit, though won’t be able to get to work on it until April–so I’ve got some time to work out the details.
Moderator: Feel free to move this to Maslow Writ Small it that is the best fit.
Welcome to our group. I think you can just make it with those measurements. I can measure my temporary setup tomorrow. I think you are in an interesting space. Is the trailer empty? How far is it to the opposite side wall?
@Snowman Welcome to the Maslow forums! I too have my Maslow inside a trailer. I have a 7x14 tandem axle that I use as my mobile workshop. I opted for the higher ceiling myself, so I was able to build a 6’ 2" (74") tall frame. It shouldn’t be too much of an issue to shorten it down to your 5’ 6" cieling.
I have a welded steel frame (definitely not the stock design), but the dimensions on this drawing might help as a starting point for you:
It’s missing the height from the floor to the bottom of the “bed” frame, which is 6" aligned to the angle of the bed. It’s likely that you could pull the ~8"-10" out of the motor height and the 6" I just mentioned to get the height you need to fit in the trailer without sacrificing any of the functionality of the machine.
One thing to keep in mind, as @Bee touched upon, is the width of the trailer. With the sled on the machine, it does have quite a bit of depth. With my sled down near the fence, it projects quite a bit into the walking corridor.
Gosh–Thanks to everyone for the quick and helpful feedback.
@dlang, I looked at the unistrut builds based on your recommendation and think that will likely be the main material for my frame.
@Bee, the trailer floor is 67.5 inches wide. I have considered building something that would allow me to work inside or outside the trailer depending on the weather.
@MeticulousMaynard, Thanks for your frame dimensions–very helpful and encouraging! If I come out from the trailer wall 5 inches then I have 71 inches of headroom. I think I could build some brackets to put the motors out from the wall and up against the ceiling at that height. Since the main need for strength seems to be at the top of the frame I think I will try to build a rectangular frame the size of the wall that can be kept flat against it when not in use, and then rotate out with telescoping legs that I might be able to lock into a track on the floor.
I think I’ll go back to the section with the frame designs and start a thread called Mobile Maslow: Utility trailer so I can record the build process with supplies and costs and continue on with your helpful feedback there.
Would it be an option to use the trailer as ‘frame’
make 2 removable motor mounts on the out side.
drive to a jobsite click the motors on + additional stands
time will be a bit of an issue when making large cuts. And only possible on day’s without rain.
Eventually you could then use the same motor mount system on the inside, have a small maslow inside that can be moved outside when you need to cut larger objects.
But that needs a repeatable config, not sure how that works with calibration…
i thought that as long as the distance between the motors stays the same, no calibration is needed, so if you just mount them on a horizontal beam the distance stays the same and you can just unfold the rest of the frame.
IF you unmount the motors from that beam at all, the chances that you bolt them back on EXACTLY in the same position as before are pretty low. I ran into that problem when I added my chain guides and I had to recalibrate the distance between motors variable.
The metal on the roof and supports wont do much more than support the weight of raindrops or sunbeams. I think I could make it strong enough with unistruts though. Since @MeticulousMaynard was able to build his with about 74 inches of headroom, I think I can make one work with 3 inches less. I’ll have to learn much more about calibration and the time involved to know how realistic it is just to drive up and set it up at a job site for a day.
So we don’t get lost between threads, I’ll continue with further answers on the thread in hardware issues I labeled "Mobile Maslow: Utility Trailer.
When the motors are mounted on some kind of end socket that slides on the end of the beam and then clamped in place that should be repeatable within 1mm
If you then have one full scale 3m beam and a 1.5m beam (or shorter) for a small config. that makes things very flexible… Still there are other things that need to be solved, Chain length, bungee lenth.
i actually have a pile of old teak beams (10x3 cm) in my front yard, they were tearing down a wall in the belgian chocolate factory where i work, and it turned out to be all tropical hardwood, so i took it home, don’t have a plan for it and there are a lot more comming in the next year. The long ones are 5m, so if you want one, feel free to stop by
Pad the beam (if you care about the paint) and strap it to the roof. When I was younger and more foolish (and trailer less) I did this with plywood sheets. If you try this with sheet goods tie the front down (couple ropes ties to both bumpers pulled tight, say) and don’t go very fast unless the plywood has airworthiness certificate.
Free advice, no liability accepted, make sure it works for you, consider the source, etc
Not sure if i could get that past the whats-app police extension. Nowadays everyone snitches stuff like that quicker to the police then i can get home…, But for some reason they never catch criminals with it
