It seems there’s a lot of GF owners who use their magical machine to produce lots of copies of things to sell. (I’m one of them!) We’d love a way to print something, take it out, put in a new board, and hit the button to start the print job again immediately.
As it is, we have to wait for focusing and then calculating precision movements. Some of my designs have 8000 edges or more and can take 15 minutes to calculate. Since the instructions are already sent to machine, it seems it wouldn’t be too hard to just repeat the cuts if nothing at all was changed including position of the cuts. Of course I don’t know the software and hardware issues and maybe this is not possible…?
I can see there being a checkbox under settings for “Enable production mode”. If enabled, then after a cut the PRINT button in UI could change to REPEAT PRINT, maybe with a warning saying “same print, same position”. Any change and the REPEAT PRINT button would disappear, replaced with the standard PRINT button.
Yeah, it’s been requested before so sorry if you don’t want any reminders, but just in case I think I can’t hurt to ask again!
The few times I have needed this I have done the work on a tablet so I could stay in the same room with the Glowforge and not have to run back and forth. It was 15 min then and 8000 edges probably not possible and the 15 min put to good use organizing and first cleaning the results of the previous cuts.
Been in the hopper for at least 2 years (Repeat Last Job). There have been comments about why the machine has to recalibrate since you’ve physically moved things by opening the lid and replacing the material, but it’s in there
Yeah, I’ve requested it before also, but I worry reading through the thread you posted that folks think it only takes a few seconds after you hit print. I do have designs that take only a few seconds, but I have a lot of complicated puzzles that can take over 10 minutes after I hit print. If many users never experience that, they won’t understand what the fuss is.
This feature could make life much easier for me, so I’ll keep requesting it hoping the idea stays active…
Yeah, I certainly do other things while waiting 15 minutes after I hit print. I only need to keep checking back to see if the light is lit up.
When I first got my GF 3000 edges was pushing the limits, now I’ve managed some with 10000 and that’s great, but the wait time on these big files is terrible, especially when printing multiple copies and knowing that the server just did all these calculations and now is doing them all over again instead of sending the same calculations over again!
If most folks read that they would not understand what the fuss was was. Most of what I do that takes that long to set up are deep engraves that take several hours to cut. That is where the wait is and short of popping in a 100 watt tube there is not any hope for better as faster would not be deep enough.
To clarify, I’m talking about time after hitting PRINT on the browser interface and before the light on the GF lights up and it’s ready to start.
I think you’re saying that waiting 15 minutes is ok in the context of the 2 hour print time that follows, and I suppose for some folks that’s ok. But I can get that kind of wait on puzzles that take 30 minutes to print. If I want to make 5 in a day, that’s 4 extra wait times which adds up. Once I got these kind of delays on an evening between a two-day show where we had sold out the first day and I was very motivated to print as much possible that evening.
So, maybe it’s not a big deal for some people. But there’s some people, like me, for whom this would make a big difference.
Many times it’s less than one minute, but with some designs I can wait 5, 10 even 15 minutes while it sits there “calculating precision movements”. THEN I can hit the glowing button to start the print. Some of these d
Sounds like you need another Glowforge; both for always having one of them working, and maximizing the output, and those not wanting theirs and posting here a fair number of them coming up with so many out there.
@jbmanning5 also makes mainly puzzles and is very limited in space so perhaps he has more insight.
I guess the question now becomes - would you rather wait - or have it go and only realize after the material has been ruined that the head had been moved slightly?
I think it really goes back to the idea that the GF was never meant as a production machine. That it has become one may mean changes in the future. We’ll see!
I’d take my chances. If using full sheets of material, I don’t care if it’s off when just cutting a batch. If you hit the head and move it, it’s going to be off anyways with or without running a “production mode.”. It only recalibrates with a power cycle or if you lose WiFi at some point.
As for the files, I’d be interested in why it’s taking so long to prepare. If you want to post a file, or Private message it, I can see how or if that could be optimized.
The head doesnt home after every job, so this point is completely invalid.
I never have to deal with bumping the head either, even when I do open the lid. However, 90% of the time I dont even open the lid of my glowforge. I just push stuff in the slot, hit go, push it in enough for the next section to engrave, hit go again, and the finished ones drop into a bin out the back. Never have to open the lid. Always engraves the same place, the same way.
A redo last job, or saved common jobs would be EXTREMELY useful to me, and a number of other people. Thats why I requested it back then, and why Im still a huge proponent for it now.
There is really 0 reason this cant be done. Set up a redis cache on the server backed by a database store and distribute saved jobs as needed. I build stuff like this all the time.