Here is a Basic PRU unit doing it’s startup/homing sequence (thanks @dwardio):
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That’s probably one of the longer calibration times. Notice that the head is all the way to the right on the gantry. The head is never over there for a calibration unless you stop the unit in mid motion or physically move it by hand. Normally the head and gantry will stow at the back left. (at least for the PRU I have). If it is in the stow position when powering up the calibration process is about 90 seconds.
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I hope you looked at some of the other videos to see how fast it really works on cutting.
Engraving will always be slower than cutting and the speed also depends on lines per inch resolution,
Slow is a relative term. Perhaps perhaps if you were to give a description of what kinds of work you are expecting to do with the Glowforge, then you can get an idea of what time it will take. It will also enable folks to compare speeds with other similar priced and similarly equipped lasers.
I hadn’t really expected the Glowforge to be able to print as fast as regular laser paper printer.
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Slow is relative. Engraves appear to be slow because of the back and forth straight line operation. Below is a video of vector cutting at a speed that is only 60% of the fastest engrave speed. Because it is short vector cuts, with quick changes in direction, the head speed appears to be moving much faster. Actual operations speed will depend on how thick the material you want to get through. 40 watts is 40 watts on most CO2 lasers.
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Hi there!
As others have suggested, look around the forum a while. There are tons of photos and video links. I subscribe to @marmak3261’s YouTube channel so I know there’s good stuff there. I should also say this site’s search function is pretty good. Do a quick search for various materials you’re interested in and you’ll find quite a bit. I know there’s been a decent number of people working with various types/thicknesses of paper.
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This was the first homing after removing and reseating the had to show how that works. Much longer than the normal startup routine.
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Here is a demo of cutting a design versus engraving the same design.
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You can also see the Basic in action on our Youtube channel.
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Thank you everyone for all the responses. It answered lot of my doubts and also learned a lot. I am mostly interested in paper and cardboard cutting with some basic knowledge for cutting acrylic and MDF of thickness not more than 4mm.
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Great. Thank you.
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That’s a really cool design. I notice you did the engrave in the vertical direction. Keep it mind that it would have taken significantly less time if done in a horizontal direction.
Thanks for the video!
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Good point to make. Would have been a good demo too.
Is this because of the time spent by the ‘overshoot’ at the end of each traverse ?
Does this mean therefore that generally it would be better to raster engrave in the direction of the longest dimension ?
I assume that it only does the engrave in one direction, ie parallel to the front edge of the GF.
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Watching the video, I have the impression that the cutting was done ‘in order’.
But what is the order ?
Is the order that in which the individual elements of the design were created, or modified in some way before you saved the file ?
I can see that on a fairly large work piece, especially when I get to use the pro unit, that consideration for the cutting order will become quite an important time saver.
Is it possible, for example to re-order the cutting sequence in the GFUI ?
if you look around, there’s some exploratory work on the forums about correlating specific colors and cutting order in the GF.
@marmak3261 did some testing and determined that the color that you select for the stroke does determine the order. (Black first, blue next, green, cyan, red, magenta, yellow, white).
Or you can drag and drop any cuts or engraves to change the cut order without regard to the color you used for the strokes.
So you actually have a couple of ways to do it.
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This is what has confused me, as they seem to contradict each other, or does the second action override the first ?
Any thoughts on my other question about the direction of a raster engrave ?
Many thanks,
John
Yes, once the operations are brought into the GFUI, you can then change them manually by dragging them up or down.
Yes, engrave is always left-to-right, and it’s fastest to put things with the longer engrave dimension horizontally as a result.
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