Glowforge release

[Dave Stevens-Vegas]

I know Bonne and Saskia quite well, very well designed piece of kit too.They have really gone the full 9 yards on making sure it's safe and CE compliant as well.



That won't remotely worry China $27,000,000 is pocket change in the bigger picture to them.

That said I believe GF have said they intend to make the GF more open and stand alone at some point.

The FabCreator does look good though they have a bit more work to do with regards to the controller and processor. Both Bonne and Saskia are pretty active in the community and seem to be good folks. Having the tube move on the gantry to reduce to the number of mirrors and length of the beam is a great idea. I'd buy one of the DIY kits when available if only to support the project.

With few exceptions most of the knock off imports don't do that well particularly with regards to software. That said, like machines won't need to be cloned. It's a hobby laser made with commodity components where the UX/UI is the selling point. You wouldn't have to reverse engineer theirs, you just build your own. If the product scales well many others will be on the train. The lynchpin will be the size of the hobby laser market.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Having the tube move on the gantry to reduce to the number of mirrors and length of the beam is a great idea.

Yup, all the bigger flatbeds do this, so does the GF but doesn't seem to have big enough motors to have much of a lifespan

[Bert Kemp]

Question about the sealed lens. Is there a material the beam can pass thru and still cut and engrave??
I mean if its sealed then how does the beam get thru it to the material?

[Rich Harman]

Question about the sealed lens. Is there a material the beam can pass thru and still cut and engrave??
I mean if its sealed then how does the beam get thru it to the material?

There are materials that are transparent, I think silicon is one of them.

[Dave Sheldrake]

they use Zinc Selenide windows Bert, in effect a *flat* lens

[Bert Kemp]

Thanks Dave, I'm still trying to figure out what difference it makes, its going to get dirty and need cleaning and or replacement also , I don't see the advantage. What am I missing?

they use Zinc Selenide windows Bert, in effect a *flat* lens

[Dave Sheldrake]

in bigger machines the optical path is either sealed or filled with an inert gas (CO2 blocks IR lasers in the 10,640 wavelength like a brick wall) so having a sealed path can give better transmission rates. BUT that's on big industrials, I'm not really seeing much benefit on a small hobby machine past trying to reduce the amount of care a user has to take or has to do.

[Bert Kemp]

Another funded start up goes belly up. Reading several articles on the start up one says the owners took the money and bought strip clubs and sports cars.
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/0...-lawsuit/#gref

I hope you guys that sent money to glowforge have better luck

[Dave Sheldrake]

“We could hit the gas and start churning out huge numbers of printers in time to meet June,” he wrote in the email. “We would love to do that. We want you to have your printer. It makes us feel terrible to contemplate letting you down. But we’d feel worse about compromising on quality. We just got this power supply. Everything has been working well together, but we haven’t had enough time to feel confident that it will meet your expectations.”

Power supply on a DC laser is an exact science,everything...literally everything is a known and quantifiable value. If you are having power issues at low power 2 things become very obvious.

1: You are working top down not bottom up, the wrong way to deal with tube stability and lase generation.
2: You know very little about laser technology

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

Another funded start up goes belly up.

That's not a failed startup, it's stealing your money.

[Bert Kemp]

Well what ever it is the people that sent that money get nill

That's not a failed startup, it's stealing your money.

[Chris Neal]

I hope you guys that sent money to glowforge have better luck

Glowforge was good to me about 3 months ago. When I finally decided I was tired of waiting, they issued a full refund with no hesitation. A G.Weike LG6040 is all set up in my shop now =]

[Jerome Stanek]

I started this post way back in Dec of last year and still waiting for someone that has received their laser. Will Glowforge ever ship out any units. I see some say that the beta units have been shipped but still no one is saying that they have gotten one.

[Dave Sheldrake]

The last I read from GF was that they were having problems with power supply power scaling. They commented that the top end power was working well but low end power was a problem. The delivery dates have been pushed back to December this year so they are saying.

This is the problem....anybody with the slightest knowledge of how to design and build a laser control or DC resonator will know you never work top down...EVER, you work bottom up as that is the hardest part to get stability. The average secondary school kid can hook up a high voltage low current supply from a Fluorescent light starter and generate a beam from a CO2 based lasing gas.

It's yet another tangible demonstration of how fantastic GF are at selling but don't have the mix of staff that actually understand laser technology.

[Bert Kemp]

I can't believe that people paid 2000 dollars and are waiting around 2 years to get a product. Seems pretty silly to me. You could have been up and running a year ago for the same or less money.