Troubleshooting Guide:

• Pressing the retract all button doesn’t fully retract one or more of the belts

This is fairly common. The default value of 900 for the retraction force is on the low side. Under Setup → Config increase the retraction force to something higher like 1000 or 1200. That will tell the machine to use a bit more force when retracting the belts.

• Clicking the “Upload File” button does not do anything.

When you connect to the “Maslow” wifi network some devices will open a popup window automatically with the machine controls. This automatically opened popup window may not be a full web browser and might not allow file uploads.

To fix this issue open a regular web browser tab. You will either automatically see a message asking if you want to connect to the machine or you can directly navigate to the address 192.168.0.1 to connect to the machine.

• When moving the z-axis up or down one stepper motor rotates while the other does not.

The first thing to test is if the issue is with the motor or with the control board. Try unplugging the stepper motors and plugging them into the port on the opposite side. If the issue moves with the stepper motor then it is likely and issue with the motor. If the issue stays with the same port on the board then it is likely an issue with the controller board.

This is a relatively common issue because we had one batch of boards with a high failure rate like this. Get in touch and we will send you a replacement board right away.

• The Belts become too lose or too tight over time as the machine is running.

This issue can have a variety of symptoms and weird behaviors.

Maslow uses four magnetic encoders (one for each belt) to keep track of the length of each belt. If the magnets are able to rotate in the plastic rollers which old them the machine can lose position over time.

To test if the magnets are secure retract all four belts fully into the machine with the “Retract All” button, then extend all four belts to full length using the “Extend All” button and then retract them again by pressing the “Retract All” button. When the arms are extended and retraced we expect them to return back to the same point. If the magnet can slip the machine will think that they returned to a slightly different position. When retract all is complete check the four numbers printed out by the machine, they should be very close to zero (<0.5mm). If any of those number is larger it could indicate that a magnet is slipping.

• When updating to the latest firmware using the update firmware button it always crashes part way through the update

This happens when using the wireless update from a firmware version before version 1.0 to update to a firmware version after 1.0. The 1.0 update changed how we allocate the memory on the ESP32 giving us a LOT more space but because we’re re-mapping where the files on the ESP32 go, the update has to be done over USB cable instead of wifi. This is a one time thing for updates from before version 1.0 to after 1.0. You can find a youtube video which walks through the process here.