Maslow 4: Large format CNC routing made accessible

They had a submission 8 years ago[1] but I came across the YouTube announcement[2] of their new 4.1 Kickstarter campaign[3]. It only seeks $16,000 of which they've currently raised $249,000 based in no small part that they've already shipped several successful releases, I'd guess

Their project is open source[4], GPLv3 for the on-device software and CC-BY-SA 4 for the cad files

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12705546

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5bZfNOZi-A

3: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maslow4/maslow41-access...

4: https://www.maslowcnc.com/source

This is what it actually does: https://www.maslowcnc.com/about-maslow4

I backed the original Maslow and also the Maslow 4, and recently a 4.1 upgrade. The creator is a really dedicated guy and the Maslow is a great CNC for those who cut sheets goods from wood (though folks have adapted it to other materials) and are OK with some tinkering.

There is a decent sized community that supports the software as well.

I wonder if it’s possible to have a purely portable system like this. So no cables, just omnidirectional wheels and maybe some wireless locators in the corner of the room. It would need to correct for wheels losing traction, slope etc.

What you are describing is the Goliath CNC:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2130625347/goliath-cnc-...

didn't really make it over the long haul.

The Shaper Origin seems more successful:

https://www.shapertools.com/en-us

Aha, a plunge router attached to a Roomba j/k ;). That page is very helpful. Hard to say what it's good for unless you're a dedicated woodwork buff. Otherwise a jigsaw seems like enough for a lot of this.

Anybody know if there are any accessible large format 3D printers that have big nozzles? (Ie like >1mm)

I briefly looked but there were all crazy $$$ so curious if others know!

> The included power supply will work with 110-240 volts.

What about 100V for Japan?

I think it can do beveled and rounded edges plus do surface cuts* like for cabinent doors. And this will cut even edges, jigsaws are trickier for curves. *(likely wrong word)

Capabilities that would be most impressive with a jigsaw:

- 50mm of z-axis travel

- Cuts in the center of a 4x8’ sheet of material

- Repeatable cuts to a decent tolerance

- Cuts made while you sleep

How straight are its cuts? I've used traditional large 10'x5' woodworking CNCs and found them very challenging if not using them daily.

I had no idea that was a thing - I guess the great thing about standards: so many to choose from :-(

That being said, to the very best of my knowledge (all 30 minutes of surfing around their project site :-D ) they only recommend the Dewalt routers, but I'd bet it would work just fine with whatever local router you could get at your Japanese hardware store that is already set up for 100V

I saw something like this about ten years ago. It was vertical, instead of horizontal. The workpiece was set up on a big slanted easel, and the router unit was supported by only two cables, with gravity pulling it downward. The cable drives were fixed, rather than being on the cutting head, so the cutting head was just a router and a mechanism to push it away from the workpiece. Simple.

It's just a cheap brushed motor, it'll run at 100V just fine...

1mm nozzles and long leadscrews are generally AliExpress available.

Frame and Z-axis rigidity, vibration damping are going to be complicated, but super stretching an existing 0.4mm CoreXY to, say, 300x300x600mm, isn't that complicated in principle.

I am confused. In some videos it is hanging vertically by two wires, but here it seems there are four wires and it works horizontally. Are people using both setups?

Probably the first version. It can still be mounted vertical... well, close to vertical.

Shaper Origin took a genius approach. There's very little movement of the cutting head, and the machine itself is moved by the person. You get the precision of CNC, without the complexity of moving a machine that is heavy enough to push a cutter through wood over an uneven surface

The Dewalt recommendation is pretty strong. The router needs to be the right size to be clamped into the machine. There are some people on the forums who have had luck adapting a proper CNC cutting head, but you won't find that down at your local hardware store.

The other issue is the heating element. As the nozzle size gets larger, the rate limiting factor is no longer the motion system and whatever adaptive control, but how fast you can melt the plastic.

Most consumer 3d printers can't really take advantage of these large size nozzles, although you could print slowly and it'd still be cool!

Yes, here it is.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60q6U7NjTQ

Very limited practical application.

For the 'consumer' market, Elegoo's OrangeStorm Giga has 800x800mm 3d printer for less than 3000$ USD. Looks it like comes with a 0.6mm nozzle, but optionally can put a 1mm nozzle on it.

From what I remember of youtube reviewers, plenty of problems though, as the first of its kind. Hopefully they get fixed, but not sure you'd want to get it now if you just want to print.

I was skeptical of the safety of building this until I saw it was an off the shelf dewalt with special parts installed. It’s more reassuring that it’s core has been through rigorous testing by a reputable manufacturer.

In the about link (above), they do mention the frame:

"If you would like to build the frame shown in the video, that frame is 12' feet, by 2’ by 7’ tall."

Classic CNC routers use massive frame and rails to eliminate play. How is this thing supposed to be precise if it just hangs on four cables?

I really wanted to love this, but after setting up an older version and spending untold hours debugging it I just can't make myself believe anymore. I am glad to see them move to four cables though-- two + weights was a nice bit of math but not so great as physics.

If you're looking at this, think hard about whether it's possible to cut a router template for what you want to do on a normal sized 2.5D CNC router. It's what I do and is good enough to build a business around.

I would love to see an opensource handheld cnc router akin to the shaper origin.

https://www.shapertools.com/en-us/origin

I loved that idea & tried prototyping one using two "laser" mice instead of the tape/vision approach but the accuracy wasn't anywhere near good enough

Have had the parts for one of these sat in a box for a good few years now, but unfortunately have never managed to make room to build a frame.

Discovered the Lowrider 3d printed CNC a couple of months back which better fit the bill for me to be able to store (printing gantry on a shelf, bed suspended from the ceiling!) so hoping soon that'll enable some of the projects I had in mind for the Maslow.

Is this using any feedback mechanism on the position, or is it just feed-forward?

Anyway, I want a machine like this that can paint.

You want a really long meltzone like a Chube hotend.

Yes, they support either setup, vertical or horizontal

There's a little bit of feedback: Each belt has a rotary encoder to track position, and the motors apply positive torque rather than positive position. This is in contrast to how stepper motors work on a 3d printer, for example.

> - Cuts made while you sleep

Can you leave the Maslow completely unattended? The video examples/timelapses I came across seems to always have a person removing sawdust (or something) every X minutes.

It’s pretty ill advised to leave any subtractive manufacturing machinery unattended

A noble goal, but what is the tradeoffs on a home/small biz hacker setting up one of these vs. trying to pick up a comparable used solution? Existing CNCs can run for decades with the right maintenance. It's not my area of expertise but gcode seems pretty standard too.

Can we have a word about my butter sculpture?

> Anyway, I want a machine like this that can paint.

https://youtu.be/osUTMnDFV30?si=wLUXKoyTDgfZELKu

I guess the wheeled approach quickly loses traction when trying to exert force. The Shaper Origin avoids that by being hand-pushed (with human-level force feedback and control).

There are 2 Maslow versions: V1 was hanging from 2 chains, and "4" is held from the 4 corners of the workspace, allowing it to be used both in the vertical and horizontal orientation.

V1 also had the electronics & motors on the frame, while V4 moved everything on the sled itself. This enables the option for the "frame" to be basically just 4 anchors on your garage floor, which makes this a very flexible machine.

Cables are kevlar-reinforced belts and the machine knows how long they are and how much tension in on them so it's relatively easy to compute how much they'd stretch under most conditions.

The frame these belts are mounted on still needs to be stiff, though. A concrete floor is a pretty good option.

I'm sure folks like myself living in a city townhouse without the luck of having a woodworking studio "out back" are cursing our lack of facilities for having this kind of fun.

There is this https://www.compassrouter.com

Repo here: https://github.com/camchaney/handheld-cnc

Not at all associated with the project, just came across it the other day. Look like it uses a single optical mouse sensor and corrects in a single dimension at a time.

I got the Maslow because I didn’t see any other solutions to let me cut a 4 x 8 sheet in a small space for that cost.

nearly vertical. It needs 12-15 degrees from vertical. Horizontal is fine.

I hope you're prepared to spend thousands of dollars on filament.

The entire point of wheels is to provide as little rolling resistance as possible. The very idea of Goliath is contradictory. You want stiffness and rigidity, while also being free to move around. The only way their system could work is by having a vacuum clamping system with a movable gantry.

There was a Roomba equivalent company out there, which would have wheels that drive the motor around, but they never shipped. Maslow moves itself by pulling on belts on fixed anchor points.

The Shaper Origin has you move the machine, and it makes corrections using machine vision to track its position. It will give you more accuracy than a Maslow; but at a much greater cost and more attention.

A jig saw does not make as clean cuts as a router, and you need to have the workpiece suspend so the blade can go through the work. With a router, you can just have a spoilboard underneath.

I don't have direct experience with long, straight cuts in my use case, but based on what I have seen in the forums the Maslow 4 is pretty good at them. It has an auto-calibration feature that the original did not have which makes it much less finicky to dial in than the original Maslow.

In the forums, I have seen people cutting cabinet parts with it, so I have to assume the straightness is acceptable, but it might be worth asking those who are using it for that purpose specifically.

It’s 2024. You can buy a voltage/phase converter off of aliexpress and convert any random input voltage and phase to any random output voltage and phase for a pretty trivial expense. I’m using a 5kW one to run a 208v 3 phase motor off of 220v one phase in my shop, it cost maybe $100 or so.

Commercial machine shops that run “lights off” typically will have continuous process monitoring, automated fire detection, automatic fire extinguishing, smoke containment and evacuation, and of course the correct permits and insurance coverage.

This looks like it provides an amazing amount of capability for the price, if it meets your needs. ($525 kit + $125 motor, saved you some clicking).

For comparison I have an Avid 48x96 bed type CNC router that I am into for close to $10k. Obviously the more expensive machine has more cutting capability, but I am curious what the actual accuracy of this machine is.

I am getting +/- 0.010” or so for large parts, cutting .032” thick aluminum 6061-T3. Probably doing better than that on wood due to lower cutting forces and less machine deflection.

$125 motor? What are you talking about?

The kit costs $525, and yes you need to supply a trim router (they recommend the Dewalt DWP611 which I paid $269 CAD for, but members of the community have successfully used other ones) which you might already have.

You also need to build a frame, or add anchors to your shop floor. This can run you from a few tens of dollars for concrete anchors to $300+ if you want to build something fancier.

This one is relatively portable; everything is self-contained on the sled. It just needs four anchors points, and it'll auto-detect where they are in relation to each other during the calibration process.

A lot of users just have 4 concrete anchors on their garage floor, and they put the sled away in a drawer somewhere when not in use.

What business did you build around it?

A Dewalt DWP611 costs me $128.99 USD with free shipping and it can be on my doorstop by 4AM.

I’m sorry that you live in a country with an economy is managed such that that the same motor costs you more than double, but you are the outlier in this dataset.

Maybe next year when the tariffs kick in, we in the US can be lucky enough to pay 269 USD for something that costs 129 USD currently.

https://a.co/d/6LVfRAI

Good point, probably ill-advised to sleep with it running!

Heh, nice, from the guy who also made a wacky hair cutting robot.

I think his approach can be improved if indeed he replaced the guiding rails by a system with corner-points only. That would make it more user-friendly.

Oh okay, you call routers "motors"; that's what threw me off.

But yeah, price-gouging in Canada is nothing new; even factoring exchange rates it should be ~180 CAD.

Custom forms for concrete pours. Also did a little bit of work making supports for plaster casting.

I was never really able to sell the advantages to artists, but got some good side gig money for landscaping stuff.

(Just to clarify: the business is wound down, but I personally still use the approach in art projects)

> https://www.maslowcnc.com/addendum

I need to know what drama happened to cause this, lol

For a full sheet low cost CNC the v4 LowRider is hard to beat

https://docs.v1e.com/lowrider/

>The Shaper Origin has you move the machine, and it makes corrections using machine vision to track its position. It will give you more accuracy than a Maslow; but at a much greater cost and more attention.

I really don't understand the market for the shaper. Even the youtubers that get paid to shill them don't seem to have a compelling reason to be using them.

>It’s more reassuring that it’s core has been through rigorous testing by a reputable manufacturer.

Basically every CNC uses some sort of off the shelf router or router motor.

Considering it uses a readily available off the shelf router, you can presumably get the Japanese version. I suspect the Japanese version is probably using the same motor as the US version.

I still have the original Maslow in the box it came in :-/ I just never had the capacity to get it running, there are steps

There's a YouTube explainer somewhere. But the basic gist is that after developing the first Maslow device as open hardware, MakerMade sold their own version (with agreement from the original designer, who I don't think wanted to spend all his time manufacturing them). Then MakerMade decided they owned the "Maslow" name and it all got messy.

Sounds very "mullenweg"ish.

So essentially, the SpiderCam minus z-axis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidercam

As someone with access to a big 5x10 CNC and a large laser, I much prefer the laser for making forms (acrylic or wood, then use jig saw plus trim router). CNCs are just a step up in terms of complexity for part time use. You have to consider feeds and speed, chip load etc, whereas a laser is much more forgiving. However, I realize accessibility for each tool isn't always easy.

On the flip side, if you live in a city townhouse, there's likely a makerspace with all this and more. For the cost of that Maslow, I get a year membership to my makerspace that has a full woodshop, metal shop, electronic benches, sewing, 3D printers, large format printers, laser cutters, CNCs etc etc.

> It's 2024

Not sure what you are implying with that. Not everyone is an electronics expert.

And, correct me if I'm wrong, they also have a person somewhere around and a big red button, right?

Broadly the same market as the Festool Domino. The Domino doesn't do anything that you can't do with a dowel jig or a biscuit jointer, it's just does one thing quickly, accurately and well. The Shaper Origin isn't a replacement for a full-sheet CNC router with an ATC, but it is an excellent alternative to a plunge router and a stack of custom templates. Nobody needs one, but for someone who does high-end custom cabinetry and joinery, the Origin should give a good ROI.

I don't think CoreXY scales up nicely because the belts get so long.

Not if they're running lights-out, which is increasingly common in machining. A modern machine tool with all of the features mentioned above is designed to run unattended. It isn't uncommon for bar-feed lathes or mills with pallet pools to be actively running for >160hrs per week. If you're careful about your parameters and run the machine well within its capability, you rarely need to hit the big red button. Modern machines are smart enough to hit the big red button themselves when they really need to, and alert a human to the fact that something has interrupted production.

https://www.mscdirect.com/betterMRO/metalworking/definitive-...

If you struggle to make a working website, I'm going to pass on the CNC router.

Being able to cut complex shapes on site for art builds, where a designer knows Illustrator but nothing about tool paths, has paid for my Shaper Origin several times over already.

I work with one machine shop in Kent, WA that has a dozen Citizen L32 swiss machines in a row, turning out parts all night long. It will automatically stop with no notification for minor faults but stops and pages the on-call for major issues.

https://youtu.be/HLSerqr6WTs?si=xslBZNXjpDGTlfy5

I've not bought an origin, but think it definitely has a niche. You can do almost everything you can do with a Shaper Origin with a regular router, but you'll need a template or jig to do it.

For example: - It can do dovetails, etc. instead of purchasing a Leigh jig and using a standard router. - You can do hinge mortises for various hardware. - Cutouts in hardwood floors for various registers, without having to make a template for just that thing.

When you get into curves instead of just straight lines it can be easier to work with the Shaper than a template/jig. You can also use the Shaper to build a template that a standard bearing guided bit will follow.

You can do all of that with another tool, but the Shaper origin does it with less setup. The trade-off is if you have the setup then a regular router is probably going to be much faster to batch things out.

The Shaper Origin looks pretty awesome, but for that kind of money you are quickly getting into true precision machines.

> but stops and pages the on-call for major issues.

Just for curiosities sake, where are those on-call people located? At location, close to factory, home presumably?

>where a designer knows Illustrator but nothing about tool paths

I guess that's probably the best use case, you've changed my mind.

It’s far past time to become one, or to be left behind.

Just local management, so I’d assume within a “reasonable” commuting distance. Note that in Seattle, a 2 hour peak-traffic commute might be only 20 minutes in the middle of the night.

This should become a verb. Mullenweged

There are also people using the cheap chinese spindles instead of the Dewalt router. any spindle <67mm diameter at least 4" long can be made to work by putting a sleeve on it.

The key feature you are missing is that it is a sled that rides on the workpiece, so the cables are just moving it in one plane, while the spindle goes up and down relative to the sled.

So it doesn't need the big, rigid gantry of a traditional machine.

but it also is limited in that you can't cut away too much of the surface of your workpiece, you need to leave enough to keep the sled from falling into the cut.

It's also a lot slower as it's not as rigid.

As far as accuracy, we are still working on that in the software. It is very precise (repeatable) but accuracy is going to depend on many things, including how rigid your frame is (anchors in concrete work very well here) and so most people are getting around 0.5-1mm of accuracy (so +- 0.02-0.04")

This is not a very rigid setup, so your cuts are not aggressive. If you have the space and budget for a big machine, It will be more accurate and FAR simpler software, but the maslow can be packed in a 16" cube, and setup anywhere you can glue down 4 anchors.

There is also a frame posted a few days ago that sets up with 6x 8' 2x4s https://forums.maslowcnc.com/t/maslow-4-collapsible-frame-fo...

A good lowrider setup is a good option. If you can set it up so that you can use the table for other things when you don't need the CNC, it can be especially good.