Discussion of the May '17 Update

That is too funny!

You should tell him each GF he works on is his own, then give it to someone else. Watch that build quality sky rocket. :smiley:

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Yeah – well – the show is good (and often painfully true) but you should try living it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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cmon dan, at least pretend I have a basic understanding of that part of the glowforge config after lurking for a year and a half. I’m asking why you’d do that for an demo vid. Was it intentionally done in that order (unlikely, since the part where you were engraving the custom message dropped significantly), and if not, why isn’t it prioritizing engraves over cuts by default? Why not put reordering into the video - its clearly an important step in the camming process.

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Thankfully @dan doesn’t seem that kind of guy, either to his workers or his customers. The approach I’d love to see is assign him to build X number GF, and tell him an unspecified unit from that batch will be his. Watch quality obsession become quality obsession squared.

The text engrave happened after the cut because he added the text to the cut file after the cut lines were already listed in the thumbnail column.

He just didn’t bother to drag the text engrave higher in the queue. He could have done so - it would have taken one more step. (Which he probably forgot… :wink:)

Generally though, it’s not a big deal - it will engrave just fine on something that has been cut.
( from experience with the PRU.)

And…there’s a really crappy demo now that shows how to order cuts here:

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I would think there should be no need for concern if it cuts or engraves first because of the auto focus. That would make order of function more a sensitivity to the material behavior, particularly in cases of heat buildup. At least that’s my understanding from the forums and the design descriptions. Cut/engrave certain areas in certain orders because it messes with the material, not because GF can’t cope with engraving after it has been cut.

Or am I off base?

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Nope…you’re right on the money, and it’s a pretty freaking magical thing to watch. :relaxed:

The only time it does become an issue is for some light weight materials that can tend to get blown around by the air assist…those little bamboo beads that I engraved the card faces on were one case. Paper would be another, or lightweight fabrics.

But the cuts can be ordered for those, very easily, and the secret to keeping things stuck down turned out to be using a simple double sided adhesive roller for me, so I don’t usually even bother to re-order the cuts and engraves on the lightweight stuff either.

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One point I would like to raise here @dan.
How can we let you know if there is anything else we’d to see in the comments below…
If you disable the damn comments?
Just saying:smile:
And the bloody emojis aren’t working again.:angry:
Oh, maybe it’s just the happy ones:grin:

Yep.

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Chuckle…pop a space in between the emoji and the previous word.

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If i did that, what would I have to moan about:grinning:

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Ultimately that’s true but when @henryhbk suggested that was why he got good results on his Seder puzzles @dan said AF wasn’t working yet. It’s just got really decent depth of focus tolerance so the results still look good if it drops a fraction of an inch.

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  • Head homing

Yeah baby…

I enjoy your energy, Dan. Keep it up (if you can…)

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It prioritizes order by color and operation by object (line vs fill). As a designer you can make it default the order & operation by specifying the colors and fills. Or you ignore that and do a quick drag & drop in the GFUI.

Black is the first color and if it’s a line it will be the first thing to do and it will cut. If it were a filled box colored black it would be first and an engrave. Since it doesn’t have to be filled to engrave - you can specify the operation in the GFUI for vector objects, it can be an unfilled object that you tell the GFUI to engrave. Since it’s common for lasers to do that and it’s less common for the fill vs line object differentiation, I almost never use fills but just change the operation type in the GFUI.

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I’ve been told by my children that my eyebrows go way up when I’m angry at them. I have angry eyebrows.

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Interesting. I may have misunderstood, but I got the impression from other forum posts that the basic functionality of AF was there, but not all the advanced functions turned on I have seen other items posted here that, due to material curvature mid-process, should not have been possible at all just on depth of focus tolerance. As with most GF features I’ve seen, I’d expect basic functionality to be possible without advanced features being turned on.

The version of S/W that the pre-release users have is certainly different that what the Beta users and the GF staff are using. There is functionality to which we do not have access. The pre-release units currently take a single AF measurement at the start of the print. Multipoint AF is not yet enabled. There was a post a month or so back that seemed to indicate multipoint AF was enabled but Dan corrected the assumption.

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Great job on the light switch covers, @dan. Looks like a hoot!

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I honestly don’t remember, so I guess not.

I don’t know (or have forgotten!) the backstory on how this works and why. But the current implementation hasn’t caused me any problems, at least.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Autofocus definitely works! Multipoint autofocus isn’t implemented yet - that’s where it tracks the material across a curve.

Right.

Groan

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Last month when @henryhbk did his Passover place setting puzzles he cut first & then did the engrave. He thought the AF was working and responsible for the engraves being good even though the pieces had dropped after cutting but before engraving. I thought you said AF wasn’t working. Did the software get updated for that now? Does it work okay for flat drops but just not for rounded edges like iPad backs?

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