Glowforge 2 Speculation

Bigger, faster, stronger - good things to shoot for, IMO.

My biggest worry with the current Glowforge is that it doesn’t look very fast.

The one thing I’ve not seen a laser do is “angles other than 90 degrees”.

That would be a game-changer for me.

I don’t mean rastering the edge in small increments until is beveled. That just takes too long. I mean actually angling the laser cutting head. I don’t even know if it would work or not.

Being able to angle the laser cutting head to several preset angles would be awesome (like 45, 30 and 60 degrees). Having variable angles would be even better. Of course you would have to be able to turn the head as well so that the angled cut is facing different directions.

It would be complicated but awesome to see it work.

7 Likes

If GF1 is as advertised then I’m good. If not, betting on GF2 wouldn’t be my best decision. Since play money comes hard, don’t see me buying an improved product for a long, long time.

2 Likes

I didn’t even know I needed a laser e/c until a friend showed me a link to the FS website. When I shopped around and saw the GF, I instantly knew that this is the one I must have. I first bought a basic, but soon upgraded to a pro (to beat the price increase).

I second the requests of many:

  1. Z-depth increase
  2. Pass-through size increase
  3. Easy filter change
  4. Power increase
  5. Rotary accessary
4 Likes

I am actually pretty surprised no variable angle cutters have been built.

If you rotate the entire focusing head using the center of the third mirror as your axis, then focusing is unchanged. Calculating where the beam will strike is trivial trigonometry. And the extra servo motor would not add too much weight to the cutting head carriage.

The super expensive industry 6+ DOF laser cutting arms arm considerably more complex, but just adding the ability to cut angles between +/-45 degrees from vertical shouldn’t be hard to accomplish.

8 Likes

Seems like (my argument from ignorance) that focus may be an issue, which I suppose could be addressed with a different lens?

I think speed would be a great gen 2 feature.

1 Like

I fully expect that 1 year after after the successful delivery of the Glowforge I, we’ll be seeing @dan on a stage in Seattle wearing a black turtleneck and jeans. He will at the GlowWorld Expo announcing the Glowforge II.

Presentation will end with "And. . . . One more thing . . . the glowPod is coming. Followed yearly by the glowPhone, the glowPad and finally the glowWatch. :smile: :iphone: :telephone_receiver: :calling: :watch:

This could be the start of something big!

Edit: And by the time they release the Glowforge VII, it will have minimal updates, but will sell like gangbusters because the Samforge Galaxy will be catching fire like crazy and will have to be recalled. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

2 Likes

Path from third mirror to focal lens would be unchanged by rotation. As long as you already had a long focal length, you would be set (just have to make sure you do not allow an angle which would cause the bed to crash into the head trying to get material up to the focal point)

3 Likes

Isn’t speed just largely a function of power?

1 Like

The trick for angled beam on the optical side would be making it as long-term reliable as a nonmoving assembly while not adding significant mass or cost. Whoever figures out how to do this (and how to make software that incorporates it intuitively yet correctly) will have a big market to themselves for a while.

I’m hoping someone can figure out how to cheaply-enough decouple power from tube size, because half-inch or more single-pass cutting (and twice that for doulble-sided) in a compact package would be a really big deal. Especially with angled cutting.

3 Likes

That’s my reaction. Lasers have been around a long time. Putting a movable head on the gantry would seem to be a not too difficult an engineering featv- especially with a gantry mounted tube.

Being able to rotate the head around an axis to allow for undercutting or other techniques would seem doable.

It also seems it would be easier with a laser than a CNC mill which also ought to be able to do it but with some real mass on those cutters would be an engineering challenge.

1 Like

I feel like any significant increases in bed size and z-depth are unlikely if they intend on going for the same household market with the second Glowforge. The size of the current Glowforge is already likely pushing the limits of what people would put in their living room. And laser power could be in the same boat. I could see them possibly going all out and doing all that stuff on the next pro model.

But with the basic 2.0 I’m thinking the footprint will be mostly the same, but with components surrounding the bed shrunk to increased tube size by a few inches, as well as bed space by a few inches in each direction.

1 Like

I think this is a really good point. The average diy-er, who sort of seems to be their target market, probably is going to be in the smallish/desktop device. Or maybe who they targeted originally won’t end up being the average user. I wonder who the average buyer is. The forum might not necessarily be representative.

1 Like

Not sure I agree. More Z height and rotary engraving are already in devices similarly sized. Being able to engrave bottles and glasses is a natural market addition.

My color laser printer is much taller than the GF. It’s narrower but the shelf next to it is consumed with supplies - Avery label stock, paper, T-shirt transfers, etc. A bigger GF wouldn’t take more room than my printer.

Also, it’s not unlikely that it wouldn’t be a living room device but a workroom or workshop item. A few extra inches taller would be immaterial. In fact a taller Z with rotary wouldn’t need to be any bigger than the basic with air filter and the rear exhaust would be the same as every other small laser on the market.

I’m not enough of a dreamer to imagine the next generation of GlowForge.

But for GF 1.5, I’d like to see incremental changes:

  • Greater Z depth
  • More powerful laser, to cut further into the increased Z depth
  • Hardwired network connection

And if I am really dreaming, I would love to see a GlowFriend (OK, I don’t have enough imagination to make up names either), which would be a box that plugged in to your GlowForge 1.5 and would allow me to feed standard format files (dxf, gcode, whatever) straight to the GlowForge and print without connection to the outside world. I’m thinking something like a BeagleBone/BeagleBoard SBC running a conversion app specifically for the GlowFriend hardware.

As I recall the theory goes that cuts are going to be largely power-limited. In other words, when you’re cutting you’ll have the power set to 100% and you’ll move the machine just as fast as you can while still burning/cutting all the way through the material. Engraves, on the other hand, will be speed-limited. In other words, you’re going to have to turn the power down so that you don’t burn all the way through the material. As you turn down the power you can also turn up the speed to achieve the same effect.

The faster the machine, the faster you can do engraves. And since engraves take a long time, getting them done faster is quite helpful.

I’ve typed many drafts of this and anything with more explanation became more “ramble-y” than I liked. But if more explanation would be helpful I’d be happy to go more in-depth.

2 Likes

I’m ok with rambling. I usually do. :slight_smile: I think we’re on the same page. I know there are some mechanical limits to speed but we really don’t know what those are yet.

The other factor to engraving will be desired resolution - or LPI as we’ve see GF elect to call it.

2 Likes

Wouldn’t a more powerful Glowforge for 2.0 require a non-CO2 laser or a longer tube?

Maybe I’m wrong but my understanding is within wiggle room laser output power is directly related to tube length.

1 Like

Yes, tube length is correlated to power. So a stronger 2.0 would mean a wider 2.0 (Well, maybe you could figure out a way to mount two tubes on the same gantry, lose a little length of the cutting area, but double the power available… That would be all kinds of odd though)

1 Like