Like, a milling head? Highly unlikely, unfortunately.
One nice thing about laser cutting is that the cutting tool (a frickin’ laser beam) doesn’t impose any torque on the machine. That means laser cutter hardware doesn’t need to be designed to be able to withstand any torque beyond the friction (and inertia) inherent to the motion system. Milling, in stark contrast to laser cutting, imposes a fair amount of force on the tool. That means a rigid machine is required for milling anything but the softest materials (like, maybe low density foam). Being that the Glowforge is ostensibly only designed to be a laser cutter, it’s not likely to have anywhere near the rigidity necessary for milling.
Or giving up a child for adoption at all. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t see the comment about a startup always being for sale as a negative, just something to be aware of. I’m all in favor of understanding issues like that before (if) they happen so that I can accept the possibility before emotions get too involved. It’s surprises out of left field that really tick me off.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but we really won’t know much about tube life expectancy for at least a few months yet. Early user experiences look mostly promising, though.
True, but Glowforge was designed from the beginning to handle different types of heads. I don’t know that we know it can’t handle a CNC head. Really we don’t know much about future heads it can support.
We (the founders & our lead investor, Foundry Group) have had pretty frank conversations about this. We’re all in it for the long haul. Never say never; I have a fiduciary obligation to consider any offer, and who knows what the future might hold. But we have no intentions in that direction.
The main system runs Linux, so there’s no need for a board transplant. You’d also find that the mainboard is far, far more capable than what you’d see in a typical 3rd party controller.
The head also attaches using magnets rather than being bolted on. Never say never but a milling head upgrade doesn’t seem like an obvious choice to me.
True enough but the technology in CO2 lasers is pretty settled. Absent using something like unicorn tears for cooling it ought to behave more or less as other CO2 tubes and the 1st year is under warranty on their nickel.
The warranty only covers the US because shipping is not included for OS customers. Two way shipping would be $1000 at the prices GF charge plus the hassle of getting it through customs duty free twice.
The annoying thing is Dan won’t say if the tube replacement requires alignment or not. Fair enough now isn’t the time to issue detailed instructions but he must know if it needs alignment because user tube replacement was a feature that got dropped. Either they include the hardware solution for replacement without alignment or they didn’t.
All the mirrors are fixed so it should just be a matter of aligning the tube so the beam is central and exactly parallel to gantry. I don’t know if laser tubes are physically accurate enough that you can just drop a new one into the same mountings and expect it to be aligned or not but GF must know.
Not really. It was billed as an easy user replacement. Now it is recommended as a factory replacement but they will sell the tube for those who feel competent to replace it themselves.
To be something anybody could replace I expected the tube to be in some form of cartridge, so it could come pre-aligned and just slot in. That doesn’t seem to be the case. It looks much the same as any other laser tube mounting. Not very hard to replace for a technical person like myself, but not for a lot of the target customers who are more art and craft oriented.
At the very least it involves high voltage wiring and plumbing. How easy that is depends on the connectors. Making a 20kV connection to a naked tube is not trivial. It usually has to be sealed with silicone to prevent arcing. They might ship tubes with wires attached and have an inline connector in the cable, who knows?
With the plumbing it remains to be seen how easy it is to to avoid losing coolant during the swap. Again there are fancy connectors that could make it plug and play but again, who knows?
And there is no word if alignment will be needed or any idea how that would be done if it is needed.
I personally don’t mind as long as I can buy the tube, but it was sold as easily replaceable and Dan mentioned several patents were involved in the solution. Domestic customers can always return it to the factory but OS customers that don’t feel confident to replace it themselves face massive shipping costs, risk of damage in shipping and downtime.
Being up front about what is involved would let everybody know where they stand but GF is never upfront about anything. It doesn’t need to be detailed instructions. Just a few sentences describing how the connections are made and whether alignment is needed.
