Glowforge release

[Gary Hair]

Who knew that it would make Chinese lasers look fast at rastering?

I think you cracked the code! The Chinese laser manufacturers are actually behind Glowforge - their sales were slowing down and they needed something to make them look better and increase sales, enter Glowforge.

[John Lifer]

I saw a few weeks back that they were emailing notification to the buyers about shipping in near future. I'll take back the call of vapor ware now. But I think there will be a lot of unhappy folks very soon. Flat goods only, and I'll not say slow engraving, I'll say extremely excruciatingly slow engraving. 9 minutes? Wow. Maybe there wont be any fires after all!

[Kev Williams]

Oh Gary, so cynical Did you watch the second video of the guy that makes things? You can clearly see the power of the machine. It knocked out a 3" x2" engraving in wood in an earth shattering 9 minutes! I'm not even sure if I could make any machine we own take that long if we tried..

9 minutes?

A few days ago I made a video. I was going to post it up here, partly to show why I still swear by Casmate, and partly to toot my horn a bit -- but haven't yet... I start with a customer supplied color jpg graphic, which I ran thru Corel Paint to remove some colors, exported the result as a TIF file, changed computers, loaded up Casmate, imported the TIF to Casmate, vectorized it, exported the finished vector file as a DXF, changed computers again, imported the DXF into Corel, resized it to fit a 3 x 1-1/2" or so piece of white Rowmark, sent it to the LS900, engraved it, and then showed it to the camera... The entire video is exactly 5 minutes long. The reason I haven't posted it up is because I figure I can cut it down to closer to 4 minutes

I've got nothing against Glowforge, but I'm sure glad I'll never need one!

[Scott Shepherd]

All the "It's so hard to use conventional software/lasers" is just a red herring. With run times like 9 minutes on that small graphic, the only way all that technology is helpful is if you are doing 1. If I had to do 10 of them, that's 90 minutes. 90 minutes is about 70 minutes more than it would take most any other laser. Saving 70 minutes on a 10 piece job, would easily convince me to learn how to use "Autotrace" in Illustrator or Corel. Once you learn it, then you have that skill for all the jobs in the future. However, with the GF, you'll always have the painfully slow engraver. I can't believe that engraving took 9 minutes. That's like performance of a 10W laser.

They are still on track to do what I suspected. They'll come out, people like the "I make things" guy will say how awesome it is, they'll sell way more in the months to come than they did at the start up, they'll get great press (because that's all the press they ever seem to get, no matter what), then Amazon or some big player will buy them.

[Dave Sheldrake]

And sneaked in the latest update is another delay, so rather than end of July it is now end of October

[Keith Downing]

I've been hearing "glowing" reviews on the facebook groups. But I think it's more the "I finally got my new toy and it does something" feeling.

I am very curious to know how they don't require exhuast (other than a small fan apparently?) for anything. And how is the tube "cooled"? I can't imagine the technology matches the traditional US machines air cooling.

[Lee DeRaud]

All the "It's so hard to use conventional software/lasers" is just a red herring. ... Once you learn it, then you have that skill for all the jobs in the future.

As I had it so painfully explained to me by one of the Faithful, "learn" is an obsolete concept that detracts from the "user experience" of the "core market".

[Matt McCoy]

I've been hearing "glowing" reviews on the facebook groups. But I think it's more the "I finally got my new toy and it does something" feeling.

I am very curious to know how they don't require exhuast (other than a small fan apparently?) for anything. And how is the tube "cooled"? I can't imagine the technology matches the traditional US machines air cooling.

Hey Keith,

I believe they have the standard 4" exhaust port to connect a blower or filter.

The Basic has "self contained internal cooling" and the Pro has "upgraded solid state thermoelectric cooling". Both have a run cycle.

[Bert Kemp]

9 mins to do a small engraving tells me theres very little cooling and the machine stops and waits till it cool enough to start engraving again. If its a 40 watt laser and had cooling it would do that raster in like 2 mins or so.

I've been hearing "glowing" reviews on the facebook groups. But I think it's more the "I finally got my new toy and it does something" feeling.

I am very curious to know how they don't require exhuast (other than a small fan apparently?) for anything. And how is the tube "cooled"? I can't imagine the technology matches the traditional US machines air cooling.

[John Lifer]

And I don't know if you noticed (for you guys that watched that 'review'), it was roughly 5 minutes (at least as video flipped to next scene) to UPLOAD to their server! I'll make the assumption it downloads as it engraves.
No, no fire, no exhaust, no cooling. it could be convection cooling of a simple water bath running that slow!

[Kev Williams]

I have this acute visual in my head right now; the GF engineering team gathered 'round a laptop, reading the latest comments from the various engraver's forums, and upon reading the latest contributions from The Creek group, one of engineers stands up, crinkles his forehead, and says quietly...



















Cooling?

[Bill George]

I have this acute visual in my head right now; the GF engineering team gathered 'round a laptop, reading the latest comments from the various engraver's forums, and upon reading the latest contributions from The Creek group, one of engineers stands up, crinkles his forehead, and says quietly..


Cooling?

Slams forehead with fist.... I knew we forgot something?

[Gary Hair]

Slams forehead with fist.... I knew we forgot something?

"cooling? We built in an overheating shutoff but I guess that cooling might have been a better idea..."

[Bill George]

I can just about guarantee that they do read this Forum and CNC Zone.

[Scott Marquez]

And sneaked in the latest update is another delay, so rather than end of July it is now end of October

This is a great opportunity to add another "upgrade" ,,,,,,cooling ports and a chiller. With only a slight delay to the delivery schedule, but hey what's another 12 months at this point.
Scott