Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

:squeeee::hedgie: the hedgies are so cute!! So glad you got a pre-release!! Let the fun begin! :grinning:

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So happy for you! Really great start and I love the hedgehogs. I also suggest using tape for masking removal. Another good option is “transfer tape” as it comes in various widths and you can also get it in a high-tack version.

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How fantastic! Congratulations! I cannot wait to see what you create!! I am a newbie myself. I surprise myself often as to what I can make with a Glowforge. Yay! So happy for you!!

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Congratulations! I can’t wait to see what else you make.:squee:

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Is the pause button working yet? There are any number of reasons why you might need to leave the GF while it is running. Anything from a caller at the door, through incontinence, to a full medical emergency.

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Ohmygosh, I’ve been wondering when this would happen, and expecting it. Congratulations! I thought you were a little MIA yesterday and should have known. I love the Hedgies!

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Good pick for a pre release Glowforge! I’m excited to see the projects you create Jules!

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Yeah, pretty sure if I had one of these show up at my house, I would get fired from my day job for not showing up to work all week…

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congrats @Jules, love the detailed report. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next.

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Congrats! I can’t believe you waited until morning to fire it off (after waiting all day). I would not have that kind of self-control.

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Congrats! Thanks for your posts and pics. I am impressed that you waited to run the first print. Perhaps the rest of us should invest in good ear plugs for our significant others so they can sleep and we can print.

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Congratulations…Jules…you will improve hourly , of that I am sure !..Keep on, keep on Squeeing !

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Congratulations!

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Insert jealousy here.

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I second the Gorilla tape suggestions other folks have made.

When you get to acrylic you can also use a piece of scrap acrylic as a scraper. It’s the same hardness so it doesn’t scratch but is stiff enough not to bend like spatulas do. I scrape it all before pulling the big pieces of the protective paper off so I get all the bits in the engraves, letters, etc before pulling off the big contiguous pieces of the paper. Helps keep it clean.

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You’ve lost me… “Score for your vector lines” “Engrave for a stroke line” I mean, the time difference was vast. When do you use one versus the other?

(I’ll hope for a reply within the next week as I’d surely guess you’ve better things to do than read this!)

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I use “Score” all the time. It’s just like cutting, except you bring the power down (or speed up) so that the laser does not cut all the way through the material. It burns a line that is the width of the laser on the material. The head moves at angles like it would when it cuts.

When you use “Engrave”, the laser head moves left to right and burns the material like a printer would print with ink (one “line” at a time). So it is much slower.

You would use score when you just want to quickly put thin lines on the material. You would engrave when you want to put thicker lines or designs on the surface.

I hope that clarifies things.

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Yes a small supply of testing materials came with it…(I say small because at the rate I’m going to run through it, it will probably make it through the rest of the week. ROFL!)

For the mask removal…I did try duct tape, and gorilla tape, and masking tape. For that particular design the lines were just a little bit too close together and the tar residue on the masking wouldn’t let the tapes get a good grip on it. I didn’t want to damage it…it’s pretty delicate because I cut it out of 1/8 inch ply. (I really needed to use some 1/4 inch ply for that design, but I couldn’t wait.)

I’ve got a huge wide roll of this…and I’ve put it away somewhere in the house and I can’t find it! I looked for it all over the upstairs store room and the office, but no luck. (Or my better half has moved it somewhere, which is more likely. I’ll ask him when he comes home.)

It is probably going to be a case of needing to use different materials and tools to remove the masking for different designs…that particular design had a lot of very close lines together, and I printed it smaller than the full size to save wood. So the gunk buildup on the print was worse than it normally would be.

For this one I had to use the spatula, and it worked just fine. If you guys want to get one in preparation, the link is here…it’s one that I use to pry prints off of the bed of the 3D printer, because it’s thin and flexible without being sharp enough to gouge the material: (HIghly recommended - I’ve tried every spatula known to man…this one IS the best:)

https://www.amazon.com/Cricut-Tools-Craft-Spatula-Scraper/dp/B00EZUK7IG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487861385&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=cricut+spatula&psc=1

According to the current status write-up that we get to see, it still stops the print instead of pausing it. And after having it for exactly a day, I haven’t had a need to test it yet. :wink:

One thing that is fantastic about this thing - before you press the button to start the print, you get a 100% accurate time estimate listed right on the screen in front of you, and you can choose to go tinkle before pressing the button. I actually waited until after I grabbed some dinner to start the long one last night.

Anyone coming from a 3D printer environment is going to appreciate that…the time estimates on the slicers are usually from 30% to 300% too short, with the larger variance on the longer prints. :angry:

Thank God I’m one of the bosses, or I would be out of work too! :wink: (As it is, hubs is starting to growl a little bit…he’s actually having to ask instead of just dumping jobs on the desk.)

One interesting thing…he’s been kind of " Oh great, she’s got another project to keep her occupied" for the last year or so…until he saw that ruler yesterday morning. Then he got as excited about the possibilities of putting the company logo on it and handing out to our customers as I’ve seen him get in a long time. He wants me to create a business card stand to hand out, and customize the front with the customers’ logo, and the back with the company logo, so that when it sits on the desk, they see our logo.
(We market to wholesalers.)

I told him that part would have to wait for a bit, but he’s super excited. So yes, it’s magical.

Actually happened to see it now, so I’ll give you a quick answer now…

The scoring versus engraving thing has to do with how you design your vector file. Without duplicating all of the tutorials that we’re putting together I can’t go into too much detail here, but you will have access to that information before the units start shipping in bulk, so you can go through and brush up on it in plenty of time. It is also included in the User Manual, and they did a great job of touching on everything you all need to know to jump in and start using this thing in record time.

If you are not going to be designing your own vector files, you don’t really need to worry about it. It’s not something that the Auto-Trace function does. And any pre-created files have already been adjusted for it.

If you are going to want to design your own vector files though, like I did with the hedgie, you will need to start learning to use some kind of drawing software (like Illustrator or Inkscape). This particular aspect (Score vs Engrave on strokes) only applies to vector files that you have designed in one of those kind of programs.

Those are the tutorials that some of the customers here have been trying to put together for the last month or so - to help out those who want to get started in vector designing. We’re still putting them together.

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ditto! I would have been desperately combing city streets looking for anyone who would help!

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Congratulations.

Well I’m about 1 for 4 in doing this. Nothing special about my home network. One device I never have gotten to connect and the others eventually through other means. Just sayin’ that if they need a test environment known to not play well with this kind of configuration method I have a facility to offer.

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