The Wednesday November 15th Update is Posted

The weekly Wednesday Kickstarter update is posted.

You can read the whole thing here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maslow4/maslow4-affordable-compact-large-format-cnc-router/posts/3964897

But since this week’s update is primarily a video I’ll save you a click and imbed the video here:

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions!

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Maybe for your shaft lock insert thingy, you should take a lesson from the aircraft industry and have one of these:


Image by Heinz Hummel from Pixabay

(the tag, not the bear :laughing:)

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Or the munition’s “Remove to Arm” streamer.

images (1)

Feel free to keep the missile badge on the back it make us Air Force Weapons and Ammo guys proud.

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Yeah, those are a perfect suggestion. Something like that would make it pretty obvious. Where do you get them?

Search your favorite vendor for “Remove Keychain”. They have become a popular item for sale in related gift shops and a popular giveaway item at vendor booths in the related trade shows.

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I just looked on ebay and found 8 keychain tags removed before flight fot $10. You can probably get price lower in quantity. Showing delivery as furst part of December

Martha Montgomery

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And here’s some other relevant standards Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout) - Overview | Occupational Safety and Health Administration (osha.gov)

That’s of course the US version, but many other countries and organisations have similar standards/procedures

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Bar
Another question. You stated the belts lengths had been increased to 14.5 feet. When you said the belt had rea hed the end. It did not look that long. Is 14.5 ft one spool or the total for all four?

Martha Montgomery

That’s going to be per-spool (you need 12-13’ for a 4x8 workspace and 12’ wide
anchors)

David Lang

Bar, I know the focus right now is on getting batch 1 out, but I am curious to know if you have any updates on the schedule for batch 2. Is it just too early to know what kind of issues might arise in getting batch 1 out and how long it will take to get the second round of parts made or will that be fairly straightforward.

Good question. The spools contain 14.5 feet of belt, but we don’t need to extend all of it. We just extend what we need to be able to reach the anchor points. The extra stays spoiled up until we need it.

Good question. Batch #2 should follow on #1 relatively closely. The longest lead time parts for #2 are already ordered and we’re aiming to stick with our original estimate of the pace being about one batch per month.

When we made the original estimate for the timeline before launching the kickstarter we thought that the inside edition would be maybe 100 kits and then we would ramp up to 300 in the next batch…instead the first batch is the largest which is an honor that we got so much support in the first 24 hours, but also logistically complicated.

I know everything on maslow4 is aimed at 4x8 ft plywood. I am curious about abnormal sizes. Say a 2x10 ft sign. Can you get more belt out by pressing on extend another time?.
Most of my tinkering will likely be smaller sizes, which means I will not need to pull so much out. Seems like different size jobs should be able to be completed.

Martha Montgomery

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you can extend the belt out to any length (no need for a second press)

odd sizes will need testing. The problem is the angles between the belts. you
could not do a 14’x1’ workpiece, even though the belts would reach, because the
angle between the belts would be too wide and unable to pull the router to the
narrow side.

4x10 can probably work, but you may have problems near the center of the long
side.

David Lang

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David. Yesterday on the update video. Bar said he reached the end of what extend all qould allow. There was probably 5-6 ft of belt that had come out of the machine and no more. Bar stated it would only allow as much as needed. Just trying to find out truth. I think a 2x12 could be done lying horizontally. Your thoughts

Martha Montgomery

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he was showing how it worked, he did not extend the belts to their max length.

2x12 would be a triangle 2’x16’ in the ‘top’ center, so a right triangle 2’x8’
or 14 degrees from being straight (or 152 degrees between the two belts)

that angle means that vast majority of their force is pulling against each
other, not to move the sled towards the edge of the board.

David Lang

It may work, or it may not be enough to overcome the friction

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The missing information here is that there is a step where you can enter a rough estimate of how far apart your anchor points are and the machine will extend enough belt to fit so for example if you wanted to use a 2’x10’ work area and had a 4’x12’ spacing between your mounting points you could set that in settings and then enough belt to fit those mounting points would extend automatically.

Does the machine snug up the belts to operating tension prior to calibration?

Example, if I store the sled wrapped up and extend the belt approx 12 feet to hook up. Does it retighten the belts prior to calibration. Belts at different tension would induce errors, I assume.

Yes. They extend with some extra slack so that you can hook everything up easily. Then when you run calibration that extra slack is taken up. I’d also like to add a button that skips calibration entirely and uses the stored calibration values so that button would also take up the extra slack.

Yes, it does tension the belts as part of the calibration.

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