I’m looking at doing some pocket operations and I have a single job time estimate coming in at almost 9.5 hours.
Has anyone ran their Maslow for this long in a single go? Did you have success? Or run into any issues?
I’m cutting 1/2" Acrylic using a 1/8" Single Flute Upcut bit. Need the 1/8" bit to get some sharper inside corners.
I ended up setting up a couple of 12 hour and 8 hour jobs accidentally. They went fine except for bothering my family and neighbors as it got later and later. For future cuts I am planning on breaking them into parts though as it is really hard to restart at a particular place. Maslow has been very internally consistent so if I am not swapping bits or retracting and restarting then it seems to keep within 1 mm or better.
I did have to eventually stop and restart one of those jobs and did it by manually editing the gcode. Deleting everything that had already been done then starting there carefully (z movement can get messed up with expensive results) long runs seem ok but also seem like it is courting problems so I am designing in smaller chunks or specifically editing gcode to cut it in pieces. Pretty easy to do that
. I did keep the Maslow on while doing these for 20 hours and even paused a job for 8 hours or so. My biggest problem is my computers instability which would be hard to reconnect if it got stopped. If the computer disconnected in that version 1.14 then Maslow kept running the executing code for many hours and I only reconnected when it was done. I think the new version has some differences there. If I was doing something expensive I might run a good chunk of it with no blade just to make sure I had a good plan for problems. Hope that helps.
It might be worth playing with krabzcam or something to do most of the pocket with a big bit then doing an internal profile cut with the small bit to tidy up the corners.
Good to know I can get potentially get away with longer cut jobs if I need to. I definitely want to be able to use the machine to its potential, I just don’t want to push it too far.
Lucky for us, this is used for business in an industrial area.
Wish I had the time to learn what I’m looking for so I could pick through g-code like that!
I’ve bounced between a few different free CAM softwares to figure out what’s best for our business.
MakerCAM is so clunky and unstable. It’s the program I first used and learned on, but my time with it is over.
I have some hope for Freazy KAM, which another Maslow user has posted to the forums. It definitely needs some more work but looks great so far as far as browser based programs.
I’ve heard some good things about Krabzcam but I personally was not a fan of the design and control.
I’ve currently landed on using Carbide Create v6 which so far has been treating me well.
I like the idea of changing out the bit between operations. My only fear is that my material moves during the switch over since the bit change process on the Maslow is on the clunkier/awkward side.
Gcode is surprisingly readable. I had never done it before but got it to work. You can almost cut it anywhere as long as you cut and paste in the right z heights.
https://howtomechatronics.com/tutorials/g-code-explained-list-of-most-important-g-code-commands/
Best of luck. I look forward to seeing what you make if it is sharable.
Thanks for this article!