@palmercr consider this!
20"x28" surface… even the name Happybuy cannot be beat!
Based on your posts about what you can do, I think many of us will be watching to see your success - many of us could use another, and better, laser 
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Ha, that doesn’t ship to the UK, same as GF.
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Exactly! You gotta think about how many Note 7s didn’t burst into flames in peoples pockets.
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Yes at the very least l can make a machine with an ethernet jack that can cut the full sheets, have a decent z range, home accurately in seconds and host its own web interface. It will probably cost me about half as much but it won’t look as pretty.
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Well that sounds cool. If I could build that, I would not have waited 2+ years for a glowforge. And that’s saying something, because I have very strong opinions about machine prettiness. One of my top 10 complaints about the current state of glowforge is theres a slight gap in the led lights on either side. No joke.
Though to be fair, I’m also pretty impatient.
Yes in Sept 2015 I was too busy to build my own and the GF marketing had me believe it was better than something I could design myself. So far it doesn’t do anything I don’t know how to do and I also know how to do kerf compensation and avoid over burn in corners. A big bonus is I can have metric units, speed in mm/s and power in watts.
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I was looking at that yesterday as I cleaned the inside of the lid. Looks like the ribbon cable to the camera is the reason for the gap on the left, and I suspect they use the same LED strip on the right just so a different part wasn’t required.
The benefit from an asthetic perspective is the two sides are symmetrical 
.
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Oh. I thought you were going to do something like what you’ve been describing that you could do over the past couple of years.
What you’re describing you can get pretty cheaply from China today. Just swap out a new controller. But if that’s what you want, check out eBay. Here in the states, I can get a Chinese 300mm by 450mm 80W delivered and add on a Coheshion board ready to run LaserWeb for under $1500. Heck, you could build a big Lasersaur type rig for about what the Basic GF cost (crowdsourced price).
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I don’t have room for typical laser cutters, which is one of the main things I found attractive about Glowforge. I need to make a compact desktop machine with integral cooling and pass-through. Since I will have to align it myself I don’t need to mount the tube on the gantry, so I think I will be able to get a few more inches out of it to cut full sheets without being much bigger. Height above the desk isn’t a problem, so I can have decent Z range and a less acute camera angle.
Although I can’t make it looks as nice as the GF because I can’t use injection moulding I can make reasonable looking enclosures with DiBond and printed corners. It will look a lot better than pressed steel. DiBond is laser proof and a bit of foil tape over the printer corners will stop an errant beam.
I don’t know what I am going to do about the filter though as that was also a major selling point.
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I always wanted something that could cut ten feet by six feet and have several interchangeable “heads” for laser, CNC, waterjet, plasma etc so it could cut anything however big was needed, but settled on a Glowforge in the meantime.
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wow, that’s an idea for a kickstarter campaign!
most homemade 3d printers can be adapted to low Watt laser, plotting, light cnc… but a full router table that does it all… possible but tricky. it seems like the kind of tool that is mediocre at everything…
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Actually, it is only a modification of an existing Kickstarter campaign for a standard multi-joint robot that you could use one or several and buy an entire array of different heads that could be a 3d printer, laser, CNC , plasma, waterjet, etc but also a pick and place robot ( they show it sorting M&Ms into the different colors) a construction robot, soldering electronics, and an inspection robot looking for production flaws or bad tomatoes as they went by on a belt and who knows what else.
The commentary around it was very skeptical and noted that as a Chinese Kickstarter campaign it was not subject to sufficient control but I do love the concept. I only added my own desire that it be put on a huge router table and cut out say a 40-foot yacht (with a 40-foot router table 
) or 3d print one. I cut back to a 10 ft router table so as not be too crazy, but hey if you are blue skying an idea why not.