Hey there @fastidious
A similar question has been asked previously: How to detach an installed machine from MAAS (offline use), with similar lack of expected results.
MAAS Isn’t designed with this use case in mind unfortunately, we assume infrastructure provisioned with MAAS remains within MAAS.
Is there any specific reason that a machine has to be detached from MAAS? I would definitely reccomend investigating whether it is possible to maintain MAAS Management while still achieving whatever infrastructure topology you’re aiming for.