i’m 99.9% sure they wouldn’t enable a feature like that, that actually impacted tube life, without substantial warning signs.
that’s mostly an issue on disreputable companies that overpower lower-rated tubes, i think, isn’t it?
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I filled out the form. I heard nothing so dropped them an email after about a week of waiting asking them what was going on. One hour later I received an email response that my account was all set up and I can now see prices, order etc. I haven’t ordered anything yet as I’m waiting to do a price comparison and waiting for my Glowforge first.
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I know right? But someone has to ask.
I had no idea they were running the Betas and PRU’s without overheat protection.
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for sure. i think it was overheat to the point of affecting cut quality, not tube life. i think.
sweet, thanks! i’ll email them.
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July update in June… You guys are craaaazy!
Seriously though, loving the really low power work, and the ability to engrave / mark paper … 
. Great work team.
Glad @dan confirmed units not having to be returned to bench for replacement tubes as that would have been a deal breaker. On question though, which you might not be able to answer:
Assuming many of us plan to us the Glowforge’s capabilities in a business, will Glowforge provide us with the ability to temporarily run old settings if this kind of shift happens in future? I’m worried that we’ll dial in great settings for non-Proofgrade materials, and start a engraving a large batch of products over, say 2 weeks, only to have a big dog ware update happen which renders those settings obsolete 
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Man you really had me going on that one! I thought it was going to be a shipment notice =)). Low power mode is more than welcome in the meantime though! Cant wait to try it out!!!
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I see we can cut paper now, any recommendations as to the settings that worked for you guys?
Actually started too low. 45/145 worked great on light cardstock
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I filed out the form. It took like a week and I got an approval e-mail and then I could get in no problem.
for the canadian website?
No. US.
I don’t know.
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We haven’t addressed corner power yet - things will continue to get better for a long time to come.
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yeah, we’re talking about the canadian website. i’m pretty sure it’s different, different company, different staff (got a call from mississauga, etc)
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Just tried this and it’s way too much power for normal printer paper. Not quite a fire, but a nice burning edge. 
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OK, just thought that was maybe what you meant by “no momentary hot or cold spots”.
How long did it take to weed that window replica? I don’t see any bits of paper still in spots they shouldn’t be.
ha, i thought the same thing maybe.
I see two strong possibilities for why there’s a gap between Precision Power and Full Power.
The first one possibility is that they have decided to have a consistent range of Precision Power across both Basic and Pro, and then the Full Power will be either 40W or 45W depending on the model. In that case the Basic would have a smaller gap (possibly very little at all) between settings whereas the Pro would have a big jump. This would make sharing settings across machines easier, and it strikes me as a good idea. Yes, you would lose some flexibility on the Pro, but consistent settings make life much easier for the support team, and for most of their customers.
The other possibility is that it all comes down to what they can get their power supply to do. It’s a very tricky thing to build a power supply that can do all the of the following consistently:
- Provide a variable output over a wide range of levels
- Quickly adjust the output so you can produce a variable waveform (e.g. for engraving)
- Maintain a consistent output no matter what level is being generated. (Without this you get banding in engraves and portions of cuts that don’t go all the way through.)
It’s quite likely that they can’t do all three at the same time over the full range of outputs. So they’ve chosen a range where they can do all that for the “Precision Power” settings. (And expanded that range over time as they’ve made improvements and done more testing with PRUs.) And then they’ve provided the full power as a separate feature where you need the full power to cut something but don’t need the most precision from the power supply.
The variable power supply is one of the key features of the Glowforge that sets it apart from most competing lasers and I’m sure everyone remembers how much trouble it was to get it working at the start. The power supply’s limitations would certainly affect the power settings we have available.
Or of course it may be a mix of the two possibilities, or something else completely that I haven’t thought of. 
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See, there’s that P-word popping up.
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