Glowforge, Too good to be true?

[MichaelHenry]

Some folks with production Basic Glowforges are finding that it shuts itself down when the temperature measured by the GF exceeds something like 75 °F. Eventually the cloud-only software will be upgraded so that the Basic just pauses when it sees a high temperature, but for now it shuts down and turns your partially finished work into a piece of scrap. The Basic uses a water solution to cool the tube but it can't lowered to less than ambient temperature because there is no active cooling in the Basic. There is no easy way (like a bucket of ice water) to better cool the tube given the way that cooling is integrated into the Basic unit and presumably doing so would invalidate the 6-month (12-month for early pre-orders) warranty. Some users that must use their Basics in warm rooms are installing window AC units in those rooms, but those tha planned to use them in the garage and live in warm climates are SOL for the time being.

Pro users have some sort of Peltier cooling so should be in better shape, but GF refuses to release any info on the capacity of its active cooler so its hard to tell how effective that may be, especially since no Pro models have shipped yet. One guy received an email asking for confirmation that he still wanted his Pro back on June 30, the day that GF promised Pro shipping would start. Last I heard that guy is still waiting for tracking info on his shipment and the original email cautioned that he could expect up to 6 weeks for delivery. Out of presumably 10,000 orders, only 40 users are known to have received units and those are all Basic models.

The folks that have received production Basic units all seem to like them and some of their lasered projects look pretty good so the GF may eventually turn out to be a decent product, but anyone considering one now that wants to use it in a room that is at more than 72 °F should really consider the Pro model for whatever active cooling it provides.

[Zootalaws]

That doesn't seem like a small issue, but rather a glaring, massive, obvious fufu.

The ambient temps in my workshop are about 25C before the sun comes up - can get to 35-40C on a 'good' day

Still, not an issue for me - I would never buy one of these, for one simple reason: I live 3km from the border with Malaysia. Shipping to Malaysia - even right out in the boonies of deepest Sarawak - costs ~$1100. To ship to me, a tiny country with good infrastructure and much, much easier to deliver to and in than Malaysia, costs $2300. No logic at all.

Well, that and the fact that I wouldn't buy one anyway - too small, too limited, too low-powered. I can already scan an object to vector and my sub-$1000 K40-style unit already has a camera and I can't see it being a big job to fit one to my next unit.

So, only 40 units delivered from an estimated sipping date of Dec 2015 - outstanding!

[MichaelHenry]

That doesn't seem like a small issue, but rather a glaring, massive, obvious fufu.

The ambient temps in my workshop are about 25C before the sun comes up - can get to 35-40C on a 'good' day

Still, not an issue for me - I would never buy one of these, for one simple reason: I live 3km from the border with Malaysia. Shipping to Malaysia - even right out in the boonies of deepest Sarawak - costs ~$1100. To ship to me, a tiny country with good infrastructure and much, much easier to deliver to and in than Malaysia, costs $2300. No logic at all.

Living there, you would be waiting a very long time for a GF. They haven't even started shipping outside the US and will not provide any timeline other than International (from a US standpoint) buyers can expect delivery by October, November or December. I forget which is the current claim. They do caution that buyers units could get held up in customs for a month or so.

So far as the 75 °F (24 °C) temperature limit for Basic units go, some forum members are starting to question why they were not made aware of this limit long ago and why the company web site still doesn't mention the limit.

[videorov]

Its going to be a Glowforge world before long.

[MichaelHenry]

Its going to be a Glowforge world before long.

So long as your world never gets above 75 °F.

[zeeflyboy]

Just thought I'd add some quick thoughts here as I remember reading this thread while waiting for this thing to finally ship.

I bought the Glowforge Pro for my wife - the main attraction here was the supposed ease of use as she is creative but not technical. No matter how many times I've tried to explain my 3D printers or CNC machines to her, she would always be needing my help.

It FINALLY (seriously, seriously long wait lol) arrived today, and I have to say first impressions are positive. It arrives pretty much all built, just some shipping protection items to remove and then plug the lead into the laser head which then magnetically snaps onto the carriage. Quick little wifi setup process and then it's all good to go.

We followed the start guide which leads to you printing a "founders ruler" which I thought would be a good test. I didn't want to waste the hardwood they suggest on it though so we just used the draft board material. Couldn't have been much simpler, just dragged the design to where we wanted it on the material (the lid camera shows you an image of the bed on the screen) and then pressed go... using this "proofgrade" stuff the thing automatically knows what the material is and sets the power/speed settings automatically through the QR code on the material. I haven't actually looked into it but I'm guessing buying more proofgrade material is a rip off, I like the idea of how easy it was though. We got enough in the package to get my wife off to a good start anyway.

These are the results of that first job, I have precisely zero experience of lasers but it looked like a neat job to me.










So extremely early days. Need to have more of a play around and also figure out a good workflow for my wife to follow to start doing her own designs on there, but first impressions - It pretty much does what it claimed. Makes a laser very accessible to non-technical people.

Would I have bought it for myself? Probably not... I would have got a straight forward laser that didn't require me to wait for over 2 years to get it. For it's intended purpose for the missus though, she is ecstatic. I will post updates after we've used it a bit more if we run into any troubles or issues.

[godfrey]

Nice job! A lot of us really liked the idea Glowforge had, but most of us were frustrated with the constant delays. Their design is neat, but the whole cloud enabled thing is a no no for me.

I'm sure once you settle and become more familiar with it, you'll enjoy it very much.

Good luck with the new toy!!!


*edit*

Wanted to add -- I bought one of the K40 type machines a little over a year ago -- mostly torn down at the moment, but what I did notice is their little "40 Watt" tube....it puts out 38 Watts at 18mA (which is dangerously close to damaging that tube), it's a 30 Watt claiming to be 40. Given the size of the Glowforge, I wonder what the actual wattage is. Power from different sized tubes is independent of the diameter and linearly proportional to the length.

[Bigbird48]

Laser tube (30W): (Length=900mm, Diameter=51mm)
Expected Life: 1200-2000 hours
Laser Tube, 30 Watt (38 Watts MAX, 30 Watts nominal)
$225 LTUBE-30W

Laser tube (40W)Length=1010mm, Diameter=51mm)
Expected Life: 2000+ hours
Laser Tube, 40 Watt (48 Watts MAX, 40 Watts nominal)
$300 LTUBE-40W

Laser tube (60W): (Length=1200mm, Diameter=54mm)
Expected Life: 2000+ hoursLaser Tube, (71 Watts MAX, 60 Watts nominal)
$400 LTUBE-60W
(Length=1225mm, Diameter=80mm)
Expected Life: 8000 hours
Laser Tube, 80 Watt, Reci or EFR Brand (101 Watts MAX, 80 Watts nominal)
$850 LTUBE-80W-R

Nice job! A lot of us really liked the idea Glowforge had, but most of us were frustrated with the constant delays. Their design is neat, but the whole cloud enabled thing is a no no for me.

I'm sure once you settle and become more familiar with it, you'll enjoy it very much.

Good luck with the new toy!!!


*edit*

Wanted to add -- I bought one of the K40 type machines a little over a year ago -- mostly torn down at the moment, but what I did notice is their little "40 Watt" tube....it puts out 38 Watts at 18mA (which is dangerously close to damaging that tube), it's a 30 Watt claiming to be 40. Given the size of the Glowforge, I wonder what the actual wattage is. Power from different sized tubes is independent of the diameter and linearly proportional to the length.

[zeeflyboy]

Tube is about 900mm by my estimations So how they claim 45 watts then, no idea.

So the wife is away today and I thought I'd have a quick play... This was wonderfully simple to achieve. I just downloaded an image of a logo I wanted, I then brought it into inkscape to resize it. Uploaded to the glowforge app and using the camera just dragged it to where I wanted on the phone case.

I used their standard thin leather settings with no modifications, just changed it from SD graphic to HD since it has some fine detail in there - Have to say I'm impressed both at how easy this was to achieve and the end result.

[zeeflyboy]

And just one more post to show one of the main things I was hoping to be able to use it for - etching on anodised alu.


I popped in an anodised angle bracket and and had a guess at some numbers, came out beautifully! I had to remove the honeycomb tray as the brackets are a little thick to sit on top of that, so that is why the bracket is sat on some chopping boards. This job took about 4 minutes to run through.







I'm pretty ecstatic with the result there.... definitely opens up some new possibilities in terms of finishing items I make once I've got the anodising rig setup and working. Might find myself fighting with the wife over who gets to use it!

My biggest concern remains reliability and serviceability. I will post if anything comes up over the next few weeks/months in that regard... So far over maybe a dozen or so jobs it's been pretty much flawless and gratifyingly easy to use, although the glowforge software is somewhat bafflingly missing some pretty basic things such as saving profiles for material settings and an option to convert to metric. I suppose it is still very much in early stages of development but that seems like quite a basic function.

[fixtureman1]

I like the heading as it sums it up just right. It isn't up to any specs that Dan had promised maybe it is close but still not.