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Nov 14, 2024

Upgraded Maslow 4.1 – Now on Kickstarter! - Hackster.io

Traditional CNC routers enable makers to… make precision cuts on wood and other non-hardened surfaces in any shape you desire. The problem is that they are expensive to buy and, often more

Traditional CNC routers enable makers to… make precision cuts on wood and other non-hardened surfaces in any shape you desire. The problem is that they are expensive to buy and, often more importantly, take up a huge amount of room.

The original Maslow, introduced as a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter seven years ago, changed all that by using a router carriage that moves under the control of tension cables. The cables pull the router from place to place, allowing for the same sort of freeform cutting that you’d expect from a traditional CNC router, but with a storage space requirement that is akin to a storage tub rather than the normal "dusty pool table" requirement. The Maslow also tends to be much less expensive than its traditional CNC table counterpart.

Since its introduction, the Maslow team has been hard at work improving on the design, leading up to the launch of the Maslow 4 “to great success” in 2023. With feedback from the community even this version was incrementally improved, to the point where they are offering the Maslow 4.1 on Kickstarter as either a standalone product, or as an upgrade kit for those that received the 4 and are ready to take it to the next level.

As outlined there, the full kit is available for a rather reasonable $525 USD, and upgrade packages are available for $60 and $35. Notably, the full 4.1 upgrade kit will ship first, supporting users of the Maslow 4, many of whom helped to improve it to this point. It’s awesome that the Maslow team is supporting their existing users, and since the Maslow design is open source, one could, in theory, take care of the upgrades, or even the entire build, yourself!