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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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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Due to ‘magic’.
From:
Dan said:
Henry said:
Dan said:
It’s a ‘he said, he said’ kind of situation. 
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Quick answer, no continuous or multipoint autofocus is not yet enabled for the pre-release units. It just appeared that it was working because the spot size doesn’t change as much as we thought with slight changes in material to head distance. On the other hand AF works just fine. It’s that single material thickness check at the beginning of a print.
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That’s not what it seems Dan is saying above. My original comment was related to focusing during a job. He said AF was working except for multi-point used on curved surfaces. That implies it works on flat surfaces. Otherwise he didn’t need to correct my post because single-point single-time AF wasn’t the issue.
Clear as mud.
It’s really kind of unimportant and if you disagree with the following explanation then that’s cool and I’ll give up. I think you have an incorrect assumption of what the term Auto Focus means. Dan only said Auto Focus is definitely working. That just means the head determines the focus automatically, not that it does it continuously or for more than one point. And as you know it takes a measurement when the user interface says “scanning”.
Think about it. If the head measures flat material once, why would it measure flat material in more than one place or more than once? Autofocus is needed for every job but multipoint AF is only needed for material that is not flat. He corrected your post only because you questioned whether AF was working. It is.
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What if the ‘autofocus’ checked once, but at the beginning of each object/cut in the print ?
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I might of missed it, but was there any update about the PRO or the air filter? If I remember correctly they were still working on the pass through issues and the air filter (dont know what was wrong with it).
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Those were pretty much MIA in the May update.
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It did say that they were “Preparing safety information for the Glowforge Pro”, which tells me that the hardware is probably at such a point that they feel confident that the time spent writing up safety info will not be wasted by forthcoming changes in hardware/software/operation or by potential known delayed parts, which might in turn mean that they are nearly ready to release it to the world.
Or not. 
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jbv, I took the comment about the"safety info for the Pro" as an acknowledgement that because it is a different class of laser, it is thereby subject to a higher level of generic safety disclosures
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Different class and different safety requirements and disclosures, but they still wouldn’t be able to get far in preparing that info if they weren’t very close to ready to ship.
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That would be useful if you wanted to use multiple flat materials of different thicknesses in a single job, but you still need proper multi-point AF when using materials with curved surfaces.
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Deleted. Was having a stressful time.
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I know it probably auto correct, but that made me snort…
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