I know what you mean here, but the phrase seems off… and I was going to say something silly like “How can you print what isn’t there?” but then I remembered the Yellow Submarine movie, and got happily distracted.
4 Likes
FYI: Looks like the “bad tubes” issue mentioned in the February announcement is no longer an issue. Did an engrave of a large shaded rectangle and it had no banding or apparent change in darkness across the image. Very consistent on a 20 minute rastered rectangle.
Next: the air assist is quite strong. Smoke shoots out from the cut as if blown from a straw and slams up against the front door. Have never seen anything resembling a flame cuttiing either wood or construction type paper. It does make me wonder how they will keep the smoke from exiting through the front material slot on the Pro when the slot is being used. The smoke hits that exact spot before rolling over toward the back of the unit. I will just assume the negative air pressure inside the unit will be strong enough.
26 Likes
Ive been wondering the same.
3 Likes
Opinion: Seems like everyone has put a lot of thought into coming up with table designs that are rock solid. Early comments suggested that anything less might affect cutting precision. My own table is just a $10 reject from the local flea market. Though it is reasonably sturdy I can easily make it wobble side to side slightly when pushed. (+/- 1/4"). But I have noticed zero motion when the GF is operating and can’t feel any vibration in the unit with my hand. So wouldn’t worry about it too much.
The GF doesn’t move anywhere near the speed or mass of a CNC or a 3D printer.
25 Likes
Do you mind sharing what microscope you have?! I’ve been looking at getting a relatively cheap one to help in learning how to sharpen (and lets me honest, it’s so cool just to look at things 100X+ magnified)!
It’s just a cheap Chinese piece of junk. Works with fiddling but the stand is almost useless. Still, for taking a pic once in a blue moon it is the right price. U.S. warehouse $15.59
9 Likes
can’t beat that price! i agree if it’s just a toy you use once a year it’s a good buy. that said, i’m skeptical it does 500x optical zoom at that price without relying on some digital tomfoolery.
you can sort of spend as much as you want but i recommend spending at least a bit because cheap microscopes are /so/ frustrating, in my experience.
if i were buying for myself i’d probably get this guy, or something similar (ideally a trifocal one would be nice so you still get stereo optics while using a cam but those are pretty spendy):
but this is a third of the price, and this pack comes with a ton of slides if you wanted to get started making your own (you can save $20 if you never plan on using slides like that):
you don’t need to get any scope with a camera, but the cameras are so cheap these days, and they make sharing pictures and keeping a record of your work so much easier.
7 Likes
A lot of the magnification comes free from showing it on a screen that is a lot bigger than the camera sensor. The rest is the lens.
1 Like
Here’s a great video on exactly how to use these. I actually find the ball gage easier to use (in the sense of achieving the actual diameter of the hole being measured…the telescoping gage requires finesses, a skill I have none of)!
Learn the art form of measuring an ID using a ball or telescoping gage
Plus I like the title of this video…it truly is an art form!
2 Likes
I didn’t pay any heed to the specs. In the cheap optics world telescope manufacturers claim 2000X with lens that realistically max out about 150X. But it worked for my purpose just fine.
5 Likes
it’s just easier when the two are separated and known
At that price it not only is probably made by chinese orphans, it’s probably made of chinese orphans… How can you even put it in a cardboard box for $15…
The ones that @jrnelson was talking about (particularly the 5mp one) are much more serious. The challenge I am having is whether I want a slide based microscope (of course at work I have access to them) versus a stereoscopic dissection microscope. This is sort of more useful in some ways in that the stage is fixed and wide open, with top lighting, which is more useful for inspecting an opaque part (and the very high magnification, while extremely useful for me as a doc to look at cells and bacteria, rarely apply to my “maker” projects given being able to resolve a 3u structure with high-def isn’t likely useful frequently).
6 Likes
so my response is both pithy and serious:
in all honesty, though, you can get a cheap stereo scope for a little over a hundred bucks, these days. for something like that, you can afford to go with cheaper build and optics; the quality delta between the low and high end is much smaller ime.
5 Likes
About a couple months ago @takitus, @rebecca & I were trying to figure out the engraving issue before we were told about the bad tubes. I had to pull this guy out.
CSI : Glowforge Edition
32 Likes
I’m just waiting for when I walk into the pathology department and say I need to borrow one of their insanely expensive teaching Olympus scopes, and they see me whip out some piece of wood or plastic… They have a really nice dissecting one in the autopsy suite with a 20mp camera, but I never want to touch anything that has touched that scope after (or actually any surface in that room). I suppose I could put down a barrier like a chux…
14 Likes
My wife was a histology tech for 8 years, I still get the heabs thinking about the gross room.
I came and visited her a few times to see what she did, I’ll never be able to forget.
Needless to say I didn’t ask her about her day a whole lot after that.
Now she’s a structural engineer, much better stories.
8 Likes
Now that they have abolished the one child policy, how else to deal with overpopulation…
1 Like
Haha. I also teach anatomy at a local private high school, and one of the student was kind of grossed out (we were dissecting large animals) and asked if I was going to be able to even eat after dissecting. And I tried to explain as a doctor, I could eat during this…
As for dinner conversation, my wife is a veterinary surgeon. Our kids (grown) won’t even eat with us, as the daily stories are pretty grim (although now that my daughter has decided to pursue a MD/PhD I imagine our son will move out with 3 way top-this-stories happen…
13 Likes
Both of my parents are veterinarians, mom used to be a surgeon now they both work in wildlife, and I didn’t know until high school that what we talked about at the dinner table would make normal people lose their appetites. If you can’t eat through it your stomach is week 
4 Likes
I was exceedingly fortunate in that my school (UAB) had a medical school and made the cadaver lab avail to undergrad anatomy classes.
During the first week of Human Anatomy, nobody even thought about food or drink during lab hours. By then end of the quarter, we were tracing organ systems with one hand and drinking Coke with the other. In retrospect, its amazing that they let us bring food/drink into the lab. The '70s…what can you say?
6 Likes