Does anyone run multiple Glowforge machines? Wondering how it is to set them all up. Any problems running them all at once? UI issues? Anything at all that might be helpful to know beforehand. Thanks!!
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Several people have, but I’m not one of them. I don’t recall them mentioning anything unusual though…I think you just set each machine up individually, give it it’s own name, and then when you open the app, you will see the various machine names listed at the top right.
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Only have one machine now but have had two for a short period. No problems. Setup was normal. You select which one to use in the app. Both units were on a single account.
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I’m considering getting more and was curious about being able to change UI colors based on which machine was running. It would help prevent me from making mistakes when running large batch jobs.
Probably something I could hack together easily myself though.
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You can’t change colors, but when you open a project, you can just click on the GF name you have at the top right, and a dropdown appears, showing the others. Between that, the need to scan the bed before printing, and having to walk over and press the button, I can’t see how you could mess it up…
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I can pretty much always mess stuff up. It’s a gift. 
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Well, yeah, there’s that. But you are, after all, special. Very special…
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And don’t you forget it, either! 
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I’m there with ya. I like the color coding thing, I think. Especially in a situation where you might have a job that takes multiple operations/steps to complete. I think one thing that would help me immensely would be having the current file/project name somewhere in the UI - but that’s because so much of my stuff looks very similar at a glance. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to the home page, out of a job, wondering - am I on -1 or -2 of this job.
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Unconverted or special color text as part of the file could be a workaround.
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That’s a good idea too. Just a little text field outside of the primary design (in case I forget to ignore it lol)
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I too would like a notes section per file. It could easily reside in the same place the glowforge “instructions” does. The “…” button
Any time I have layers I have to turn off or on, it erases my custom settings, so I still have to keep a record elsewhere. Somethingnin the file would be preferable, especially after I come back a few months later.
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I like it. I’ve wanted to be able to have special notes per job.
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I am looking at purchasing multiple machines to engrave large runs of items, so I read everything here to learn as much as I can about… well, anything I might not anticipate. I’m possibly going to be engraving logos on small wooden lids - many thousands of lids a week.
I have already engraved a few hundred with my current Glowforge, so I have a jig set up and a process, but I want to see how smoothly I can scale it and what questions I should ask.
Questions I have been processing including things like:
- Possible power needs
- How to vent 3-6 Glowforges in one room
- How to run multiple Glowforges from one computer (I see the answer above - choose the machine you want to run on)
If anyone has a few minutes, could you add other questions I should ask myself that I may not be thinking of?
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Plan for 6.66 amps per machine. If you have a dedicated 15-amp circuit, you should be fine with 2 machines on one circuit, providing only those two machines are on the circuit and you don’t have lights, computer, etc miscellaneous stuff plugged in.
A while back, I think @Dan posted a pretty slick set up of a bank of machines vented. Not sure how you could find the image though… 
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