Anyone else about sick of their machine?

[iancandace]

Advice taken. I see your points well.

[iancandace]

I was talking with a friend earlier about photography. He is curious and knows nothing about cameras, lenses, etc… I brought up ISO, fstops, and shutter speed.

Take this as an example. It is easily understandable with adjusting any one of those units in one direction and adjusting one other in an equal amount to the opposite balances back out.

With the Glowforge it is just way different with their measuring units. They don’t correlate at all. They are not in multiples if you know what I mean. 50 is not half of 100 and 500 is half of 1000 with the Glowforge.

[iancandace]

I’m with you on that. Same for me.

[joe]

Here is a recommended optimization process for Cermark. The settings there are in S for speed and P for power…

tech-Optimizing_Power_Settings_1-29-14.pdf

[iancandace]

I would love for there to be a percentage 0-100 for the Glowforge. It would tell you that this is max and this is min. And equal increments in between. Why 0-100 and then the full power? What is 100 compared to full power? It’s unnecesaarily confusing.

The more I think about it…I could see Glowforge knowing exactly what it is and they are using all of us as a guinea pig. Not that other companies don’t do the same.

They might be testing all kinds of parameters knowing that for some users they will have to replace parts earlier than others due to power. But they get the data they need.

Why 100 and then full power? Is full power 200? Is it 110? Are the possibilities between the two that they are unsure about and haven’t unlocked in the software?

[joe]

I know you don’t want anyone to tell you to search the forum. So I did that for you.

Here’s the announcment that introduced Full Power.

July 2017 Update

This is your regularly scheduled July update… earlier than usual, because we have an abundance of awesome to share. Shipments have started (here’s the update we emailed you about it). We’re hard at work making every Glowforge printer better by improving our software as shipments are rolling off the line. One thing we’ve heard from you is that it’s helpful to hear about software changes that we make. For that reason, we’ve created a new page called Latest Improvements (https://glowforge.com/l…

And some clarifications that Dan made.

Discussion of (early!) July update

The power supply operates differently between precision mode and full power mode, so you’ll see a big change between 99 and 100 (which is why I shared the UI sneak peek - the current UI is obsolete and will be confusing). I’m not going to share more details because it took our physicists a long time to make this work and I don’t want to deprive scientists working elsewhere of the joy of discovery.

New user question on the use of 100% power?

Just to chime in - this is a great answer. 1-100 gives you precision power mode, which is much more stable - helpful for delicate cuts and scores. Full power is more than 100, but much less than your tube is capable of, so it can be used without reducing your expected tube life at all.

And for completeness, here’s the search I did.
https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=full%20power%20user%3Adan

To summarize, precision power is very stable and scalable. For Full Power, they do… something and deliver significantly more power. They have not said what that something is, and have not said how much of an increase it is.

[iancandace]

Thank you for the suggestions and explanation.

[iancandace]

Do we know what wattage, so to speak, that 100 is? Or “Full Power” is since they say it is not the max the tube is capable of?

[jamesdhatch]

@rbtdanforth

Another friend insisted on cutting metal (he has worked mainly in iron) and so got a plasma cutter, however has found his universe very limited as well most painfully not being able to engrave as we can.

I just got a plasma CNC and the lack of engraving is a noticeable issue when coming from a laser (& you can only do metal). But you can cut metal

There’s an attachment he might be able to add to his plasma though - it’s called a “plate marker”. That allows you to do engraving on metal. It’s not Glowforge 3D but it’s good for etching into the metal. Then you can use a variety of techniques to color the engrave.

Or, with a laser you can mark it with a number of marking solutions. Thermark/Cermark are probably the best known but they have cheaper competitors now that have equally good results.

[rbtdanforth]

@iancandace

I have tried rose wood, zebra wood, and other exotics

Zebrawood is very flammable. If it gets a bit to turn red and burn like a coal that will continue till the whole piece burns up. Mahogany also will do this easier and Ash will also turn to ash if it gets started. Rosewood is several different species and I have not tried any of them, though they should be better than those three, but then I had higher expectations of Mahogany.

A bit of water soaked cloth will put out those burning coals but if you open the lid and stop the cut the piece is ruined anyway as you cannot start again part of the way through. I did manage to engrave some Mahogany by getting it wet doing a single engrave pass then soaking it again and doing another light pass with the wet cloth always available as soon as it finished.

[davidandmaraya]

[iancandace]

Thanks for the info! I need to take time to play with my machine more. Just so busy all of the time.