Trouble during Z travel

Troubleshooting
1

Hi,

I am finally running my maslow and tried some rectangles for a box project. I used a dxf and estlcam to create the gcode for the machine.

The maslow has the newest 1.10 firmware installed.

In the picture you can see that the router hit the edge of the object after changing the height of the router. It looked like all belts lost tension and after changing the z position the tension was applied again and the router hit the object.

Is there an option to optimize the tension loosening during z travel?

IMG20250827184510
IMG202508271845101920Ă—1411 111 KB

Another question.

Is it possible to increase the tension/current during a job? Or is it the “retraction force” option in the settings menu?

Thanks,
Martin

1 Like
2

We don’t really have a way to increase the tension while cutting, but it seems that increasing the retraction force used during the calibration process has the effect of increasing the tension in the belts while cutting.

The tension in the belts should be held constant while the z-axis is raising and lowering. Some CAM software will offer features to avoid these kind of marks by having the machine cut a lead in or lead out path like this:

image
image323Ă—156 8.82 KB

Or by ramping down the z-axis as the machine is moving instead of plunging straight down like this:

image
image512Ă—205 12.6 KB

3

Hi @bar,

I have done another calibration cycle and now it looks better.

I still have some questions about the correct calibration routine and hope you help me.

I have a detachable anchor that is mounted on the floor. On the floor lies a thick spoil board with 30mm height and on top the actual work piece which is 15mm multiplex.

Do I have to run the calibration on the floor or is it good to run it on the spoil board and if it is run on the spoil board do I have to set its thickness to 0?

Whats the perfect angle for the belts in the following sketch?

test.drawio
test.drawio722Ă—841 20.1 KB

Thats my current anchor.

IMG20250827184750
IMG202508271847501920Ă—2560 256 KB

1 Like
4

the perfect angle is currently being debated, but I lean towards having them level.

you don’t want them to pull up on the sled, but there is some debate on if there is any value in pulling down on the sled.

the default Z offsets assume that the anchors are at the top of the workpiece (we did just add the ability to specify wasteboard and workpiece thickness so that you don’t have to change all the Z offsets to account for them)

I argue for near zero angles, because any errors in the Z height matter less when the angles are shallow (and you have less chance for the belts to catch on things)

but when you do raise the belts to different heights, you need to change the Z offsets in the yaml file to match.

5

I love your detachable anchors! Cool design :grinning_face:

We just added settings for the thickness of the spoil board and the thickness of the work piece to the settings which should correct for any error introduced by those thicknesses, but we haven’t had a chance to thoroughly test how big of an impact they have