I am a looking to get Maslow? Where is the best source to get one. I’ve seen prices as low as $399 on Eastbay and as pricey as $999 on Maker Made. thanks for your input.
I’d try Maker Made but but whatever you do, read up on horrifying experience (mine included) about metalmaslow dot com. Stay far away from that guy.
the “maslow” was the original unit that was released. if you were recently looking at makermades website then what you were looking at was the M2, not the maslow.
The maslow was manufactured quite awhile ago. The M2 is an upgraded version of the original Maslow unit and in my opinion is drastically better then the original maslow.
The M2 is faster, more accurate, and MUCH easier to calibrate. I had a maslow for over a year and now have an M2 and the difference between the 2 units is amazing. The M2 is a much better product!
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what is the caalibration process for the M2? if it’s faster and more accurate
than holey calibration, we should implement it for the maslow board.
David Lang
Makermade still sells the classic maslow as the jumpstart kit as does eastbay and as diyaki mentioned, so does metal maslow. The M2 uses the newer calibration from the classic maslow. The M2 is approaching more turn key than the classic if you get a preassembled sled, but you still have to assemble your frame, update firmware, learn software, and get your hands dirty and learn the system to make it work. Do you want to pay or put in sweat equity? Both will get you there. Knowing what I know now, I would buy the cheapest one I could find in stock that ships quick and build a z axis system for it. If you’d rather not build your own upgrades, then get the M2. They will ultimately cut along the work piece the same speed (not including z axis moves) and the quality will depend on your bit selection and mastery of feeds and speeds for your cutting material. The art is in the cutting and finishing, not the electronics. The z axis will help it plunge faster between cutting locations. The M2 software mentioned earlier that is much easier to calibrate than the classic also works with the classic system, so you have some options. The holey calibration from webcontrol was implemented in the precision calibration for makerverse version 1.1.2. If you want to start simple and upgrade or go big to start, you won’t be totally out of options either way.
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Doesn’t work like that. The maslow board is a different control board then the M2 unfortunately
True for calibration. But both boards work with makerverse. A newer m2 sled and everything including the makerverse software will work with out the “newer” due controller.
it doesn’t matter if it’s a different board, if the process for calibration is
significantly different, then the same process could be implemented for both
boards.
That said, another comment seems to be saying that the M2 has implemented the
holey calibration, which is what’s recommended for the original board when using
webcontrol as well. If this is the case, then the comment about the M2 being
easier to calibrate is based on older maslow software and they should be at
parity now.
David Lang
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To be honest, i have looked at M2 and while is looks promising, i don’t want to drop $1k on a hobby. if it was to put $$ in my pocket, maybe. i plan on cutting mainly 10mm coro for my holiday(halloween & xmas) layout. i would like the machine to pay for itself over the next year. i.e. i just spent $500 on some coro props that if i had this machine, i could probably have done it for $200 in material BUT about 24 - 36hrs of cutting. Eastbay and Makermade jumpstarter looks to be the same kit, but Eastbay has it for $399 while Maker Made has it for $549. downside is i can’t seem to get ahold of Eastbay (sent 3 emails) but Maker responded right away.
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Even if you bought the cheapest starter kit available, you will still need to buy more materials to build the frame. on top of that you will need to make improvements and tweaks to gain improvements in functionality and accuracy. However, your use case doesnt seem to support the need for those improvements over stock (which is still pretty good). given what you are trying to do, a traditional maslow running webcontrol with holey calibration should suffice. it looks like the closest thing to the original Maslow kit is the “Maslow CNC Basic Bundle” that MakerMade sells. you will still need to buy a router and bits too. no matter what option you choose, there is going to be more money to spend on top of that. dont forget the material lost due to training and ferreting out feeds and speeds.
if you are looking to do this to save a few hundred bucks now then its probably not the best solution. saving money over time, maybe. im just now getting to the point of proficiency where i can build high quality prototypes of projects. ill do small one-offs with it for shop projects. however i still go to a professional cabinet shop to have anything going to a customer cut. i cant beat his labor rates and material costs. The guy is awesome. Maslow has been good for me to learn what considerations to make when designing things which makes his job 100 times easier.
each year my group of local guys in the lights hobby probably spend $600 - $1000 in coro props to better our shows. depending on the size of the prop, normally 3ft or bigger, it had to be shipped to us using a slit, to bring down the price of shipping. i dislike the slit very much. my goal is not to make $$ but to save $$ over time and hopefully pass the savings to my buddies all the while using some of their savings to help offset the cost of purchasing the machine until i break even.
Ah, ok then. In that case this may be a good option after all. It may also supply you with a greater degree of choice in decorations too.
Regardless, my previous statements still hold. All the versions of Maslow that are currently available are not out of the box solutions. They will all require a degree of effort to get up and running. If all you want to do with it is cut decorations that do not require highly acurate cuts then the Maslow is a good application for that. You will likely only need the basic set-up to acomplish this. The $549 kit from MakerMade is essentialy the original Maslow kit. It is a bit more expensive thant the original kickstarter kit but not that much. You dont have the fancy Z-axis but the router base version it utilizes works well enough. Not great, but not terrible.
I’ve never dealt with the non-Bar / original maslow kit suppliers so I can’t speak to which one is best.