Imma not link to it so I don’t get banned, but the Glowforge has been thoroughly disassembled and documented and it does have an IR port.
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Thanks. I had previously searched for a teardown and not found one (or a photo of the bottom). Now that I knew there was one for sure, I searched a little more and found one. In the one I saw, the mention of the IR Port is easy to miss — it is only in an image, not in the text of the page. Given this it seems likely communication with the air filter will be via IR. Extenders are possible in some cases, but you’d have to expend both the exhaust vent and the IR. Let’s just hope it’s irrelevant and filter changing is easy enough even if the GF has to be lifted up.
The Glowforge has to be lifted off the filter and the exhaust disconnected every 6 months or so to change the filter? That’s quite the engineering flaw in a known user replaceable item. I’m glad my clothes dryer doesn’t require me to disconnect the power lines and remove it off the pedestal is sits on to clean the air filter that get clogged. Getting the neighbor over to assist with a two person task is a pain.
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Although the Prusa i3mk3 uses feedback from the motor drivers for that purpose and that works great… But yes, limit switches always seems easier (and helpfully user adjustable in a lot of cases (a quick washer here and there can fix a lot of alignment issues)
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For the little lint trap, no. To actually clean the dryer, you probably have to partially disassemble either the front or back, and disconnecting power would be the first step.
Lint buildup is a very common fire hazard that many people are blissfully unaware of, being under the assumption that the lint trap actually traps all the lint.
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Although I don’t have a pre-order on this I’m really interested in what you guys come up with as my currently solution is less than ideal (homemade filter system). Just a suggestion on how to express it: I was thinking that picking two very different materials (proofgrade of course) and running a 'forge until the filter was spent might help people e.g. Filters will last you ~50 hours for cutting medium birch ply (obvs a very common material) and ~23 hours for cutting medium acrylic.
This way we know the filter is more resistant to wood smoke than acrylic, can deduce that thicker materials will reduce life and make a judgement on how much engraving might affect those numbers. At least we’d have some idea. Right now, it could be 2 hours or 2 weeks of use which is a big difference.
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So that’s where all the missing socks go. I’d wondered. 
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How the hell do clothes get outside the drum? Lint sure, it’s tiny, but socks???
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socks are sneaky little bastards. like mice and cockroaches, they seem to be able to migrate through small crevices.
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at one point in my life, i would actually buy like 4 pair of the same set of socks. one sock would disappear. no problem. second sock would disappear, i still had 3 full sets.
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I still do 
Never worry about “matching” my socks.
But I only regularly wear 2 colors - black & white. The black ones go with all my normal clothes and the white ones for shorts. I have one color palette for normal wear - black, charcoal & bluejeans. Makes getting dressed so much easier 
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i’ve migrated to funkier colorful socks for work. still pretty generic outside of work.
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I once found one of my husband’s socks hanging over the top of an upper kitchen cabinet door. He had no idea how it got there. All I could conclude is that it was trying to escape and mistook the cabinet door for an exit.
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That’s one positive thing I’ve found about being post-surgical and having one foot stuck in a bandage and giant protective boot. All the orphaned socks in my drawer are suddenly wearable again!
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I am rather disappointed by this. I did order a Glowforge with a filter three YEARS ago. If you use the thing without an air filter in an office building with gas and/or smoke sensor, you are simply screwed. It turns into a very expensive paper weight. I happen to work in New England. Trying to keep the windows open in the winter or the summer to do some multi-hour cutting is simply not an option if you want to keep the peace in any sort of office community. Had I known any of this when the Glowforge came out, I would have bought an alternative product (there are, in fact, many). Three years is an awful lot of time to develop a functioning product. All the things I could have built, I haven’t.
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Will there be a link for those of us who have a Glowforge but do not have an air filter pending? I would like to put in a purchase for the alternative air filter.
I wish our founders discount could be extended and does out bonus perks such as store credit expire. It would be nice to use that on our filters
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I agree with you 100%.
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I would kill for your level of “unusable”. We bought one for the Makerspace in our County public library system. The Makerspace is in an interior room, and the building in which it’s located has no operable windows anyway. Our Glowforge has been, and continues to be, COMPLETELY F*CKING UNUSABLE (did you hear that, @dan? I hope you’re going to be at Maker Faire NYC this weekend, so I can tell you in person how pleased I am with your product).
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Why even bother asking the question? Deadlines have slipped so much, who would believe anything that comes out of @dan’s mouth?
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Thanks for replying - it’s just been so busy! And it’s not mine exactly - it’s for our school. So we are not allowed to monkey around. Did use BigJohn’s idea, so we’re venting out the window. OK for now, but come winter, yikes!