If you could come up with a feature that doesn’t exist for Laser engraving or engravers yet, what would you invent or want in one?
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No so much that it doesn’t exist but it’s too expensive for the consumer market:
Additional axes. Being able to laser off angle would be cool.
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Self cleaning! Optics, enclosure, crumb tray, everything.
And a CO2 laser that can take living in a Florida garage year round and operate without overheating. Even looking at other market versions you’re such in a 70-80F operating range.
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I’d like a feature that was advertised when the GF was announced - on-the-fly variable focus, for cleaner depth-map engraving.
Instead, the machine halts while it goes thru a re-focus exercise (the tick tick tick process while the lens is repositioned.)
I’d also like the ability to pause a print and open the lid without the job being cancelled.
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YES! Especially the part about opening the lid without the job cancelling!!
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Carbide 3D recently started beta on their CNC software which would let you resume the CNC operation if you lost power or something crashed. It will just start over from the last line of G-code that was executed. It’s a life saver for some of the crazy 10+ hour carves people do.
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What’s irritating here is that this just seems like a software fix. I have no idea why they haven’t implemented it yet.
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Yes you do. They haven’t figured out how to monetize it 
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A crumb tray that goes up and down so you don’t have to remove the crumb tray.
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Uh, somewhere I’ve seen a thing.
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This
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A live bed camera that follows the head so you can track the progress within the GFUI.
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Unless my memory is worse than I thought…we had that…or a semblance of that in the very beginning. Then it went away.
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Correct, the job progress could be monitored using the lid camera. It was jerky but pretty nice to have. I never saw them admit why they removed it, but I’m certain it’s bandwith issues ($$) with the cloud.
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I know how to bypass the lid sensors, I actually had those magnets on little clips that I used with my original glowforge. I very rarely used it, but when I needed to, it was nice to have. Obviously, some common sense is required…
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Pretty sure you’re mistaken. They had an animated shaded area that represented the complete portion, but as far as I know they never updated the view. It wouldn’t make sense, any lid picture you would take during the job would be seriously obscured by the gantry,
As I recall, Dan said it was removed for “performance reasons”. It was discussed here, with a little digging I bet we can find it.
EDIT: I tried a little digging and couldn’t locate the thread that discussed it. I think it was right around the end of 2017, but maybe I’m wrong about that.
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Now that you say that, I think you’re right – it was an animation of the progress as sent to the machine, but not a live view.
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Hmmm…I guess I was right questioning the accuracy of my memory.
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I’d like to see better alignment between the camera preview and the material to be cut. It doesn’t matter much with large flat stock, but engraving small parts without building a jig and many test prints is a huge time suck.
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If we’re dreaming big, I want a built-in UV or similar printer, so we can print ant cut seamlessly.
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