I don’t think anybody does design in laser CAM software but you can normally add a rectangle or an ellipse to cut out things or a line to chop material. You can put those in a file and load and resize them to achieve the same effect I believe.
Laser cutting is as complex as 3D printing. And GF has made laser cutting a much easier experience than 3D printing, through a clean, web-based user interface and the software behind it. So while it’s not perfect, it’s already quite usable.
As ‘what if the company shuts down the servers’ - the servers are run on Google App Engine, which means there’s no fixed cost, because everything runs on demand. So if GF doesn’t get popular costs are low. And if GF is hugely popular they should be able to pay for the servers. So I don’t think the servers could go away while GF exists as a company.
Still, they could shut down completely. GF has promised to open source the firmware, specifically so that the community could take over and replace the servers with something to keep the GF units in the field usable. Of course, people would need to do that work. And until we see the firmware source code, it’s hard to say what would need to be done on the server side. For example, if the firmware interprets g-code, then we’d need to figure out how to send g-code to the printer via WiFi. That sort of thing.
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They promised to release this with the units, but so far have failed to do so.
The only source code that would really be necessary is for the hardware drivers and the Glowforge process that runs the waveform files. The rest of the firmware is just a basic Linux OS built with standard tools - no magic. The firmware is easily (with a small amount of technical knowledge) updated by an end user.
Adapting existing open source laser code to work with the Glowforge will not likely be difficult, and could be done without requiring a ‘central server’.
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Agree. There are lots of open solution possibilities. Could swap controller hardware to Cohesion or Grbl, or other Smoothie boards. Then use software like LaserWeb or Whisperer. I’m not worried if we need to go that way as a fallback.
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Perhaps. It depends on what input the GF expects. If the protocol is lower level than gcode, coming from the servers, it might be a lot of work. Imagine, for example, if the server sends low level stepper motor instructions, with all the motion planning, etc., on the server instead of in the printer. Of course, we don’t know…
I certainly hope you’re right.
Actually, we do know. That’s exactly what they do. They process the job in the cloud, turn it into a file (a .puls file, to be precise) that contains the waveforms (individual steps) for each motor along with the firing instructions for the laser (PWM, on, off). This file is played back at a set speed directly to the hardware drivers.
The contents of the file are essentially the same thing that would be output by a motion planner, so it wouldn’t be that hard to replicate.
The specifics of how they do “Glowforge feature” type things are certainly part of their own cloud based proprietary stew. But these things can be, and in many cases have already been, developed by others.
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I don’t know how feasible that will be. Much of the hardware interconnections are fairly non-standard. To get access to the Z-stepper, for instance, might be challenging with a new board.
Or, to interface with the power supply or on-board cameras, for that matter.
I guess you could rewire the whole thing, but I think it would be quicker to reverse engineer (if they don’t supply the source, as promised) the existing hardware drivers and use the current control board.
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Cool - how did people figure that out? Or did GF release more info?
Glowforge has left helpful Easter Eggs out there for those who speak Python. Where to find those Easter Eggs is an exercise left for the reader.
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Is there any active effort right now to reverse-engineer the protocol?
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Maybe.
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True. I did this. I have a file with a square and a file with a circle. I can use “add artwork” and resize them to get the same effect.
I think they’ll want to add this to the UI at some point since it’s pretty low hanging fruit. Though it will add more buttons to the UI that they’re trying to keep simple.
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I remember there was a limitation that you couldn’t add vectors, only bitmaps. Has that gone now?
Yes, now you can add other designs including vectors into a project layout.
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That’s great, because if you do the cutlines and such in the same job they will have the same offset.