Polyurethane, polyethilene and / polyestirene sheets

Have you guys tried with materials above?
What is the maximum thickness? Any fire hazard?

Can a CAD software be used to print directly to the glow forge? Solid works?

I believe you will need to export to 2d layout like svg or similar but a lot of cad software has that.

As for the materials:
polyethylene = formaldehyde gas. Really bad

I think the other 2 are “ok” but very very melts. Polystyrene is highly flammable when not in solid state. Please check multiple sources before trying any of these, don’t just take my word for it.

Thanks a lot Jack.

My samples of material are like a foam for matres or packaging protection…

I will check , but thanks so much for replying

I tried to use SolidWorks to save as an Adobe Illustrator file, but it basically just save a screenshot. I haven’t tried to save a SVG yet, but I’m assuming it shouldn’t be an issue. It saves DXF files fine.

You might want to check out this thread, there is some good info on cutting foam.

From what I have heard Polystyrene foam is the most flammable form of it. Foam is notoriously hard to cut well on a laser due to how much it melts, but picking the appropriate kind and settings can give good results.

I believe DXF is being nately supported

Thanks Joe

Welcome @enrique.rodriguez! I presume you are referring specifically to 3D design software. It is my understanding that Someting like Adobe Illustrator will have a plugin that allows direct output to the Glowforge. Haven’t noted any of the 3D stuff working natively in the discussions.

Thanks a lot Marmak.

Yes I’m referring 3D design software…yesterday ordered my glowforge and I was curious about the software and the possibility of using my software .

Any way let’s see when I will receive the printer

Note: This is my personal work flow developed before I joined the team at Glowforge - there may be better solutions out there.

My workflow to laser cutters is to do all the tiling in Solidworks. I have an Assembly template with each of the laser beds drawn in in the front plane as a sketch. Then I drop all the parts in, and lay them out - if I need multiple parts, I use the linear pattern feature to lay out the parts nicely.

From there I have a Laser cutting drawing template that is just a blank template with the scale set to 1:1. I do a DXF V12 export into Illustrator, and from Illustrator I can send it to the Glowforge.

The workflow is also very similar for my 3D Printers (both my ZTA Kossel Pro and my Stratasys Mojo). Especially on the Mojo (a low end machine with crippled features and very expensive consumables) Solidworks runs circles around the plating software for the Stratasys machine.

-=- Terence

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