OK, so Dan seems to think I hide my projects inside the Topics of others and has asked me to be more up front. Maybe so. What I usually do with the Glowforge is make thingamabobs and widgets. Or I just cut things to see how the machine works. Not all that exciting to others or announcement worthy. But here goes…
Here is a pic showing the difference between the 1/8” Maple Proofgrade and a similar cut I made in .43” solid Oak. Didn’t have any problem cutting through the Oak in one pass. Notice the difference in quality of the engrave on Proofgrade Maple vs. my garage found Oak. Wood type and quality selection is so important. The Proofgrade I have used so far has been perfect.
Should also note that since receiving the Glowforge a couple weeks ago I have yet to experience a need to reset the unit or contact Glowforge support. No real hiccups. A few S/W quirks for sure, but nothing that is causing significant grief. Always room for improvement, says my engineer side. But purty darn good says my back woods side.
I do have some exciting projects in mind but those might take a week or more for me to design. Not willing to stop cutting that long. Although I am running out of Proofgrade.
The snowflake on Proofgrade was an inlay type test. Cut out a snowflake negative and then cut another snowflake with kerf adjusted to insert.
Edit: Just learned that there is the possibility that this pre-release unit may have a higher power tube intended only for the Glowforge Pro. There is no way for me to know.
It’s great to see such thick oak being cut in one pass. For those of us without machines to test this stuff with, that is really exciting and announcement worthy. Thanks for creating a new topic to share.
The holes look straight walled to the eye. If I hold a straightedge up to the exterior cut it seems, to me, to be perfectly straight with no visible slant.
Note to self. Glowforge hasn’t as yet released some capabilities to the Pre-release users. For my unit, only a single material thickness measurement is made with the head sensor prior to the cut. (Still, better than having to do it ourselves like most other lasers) If you accidentally allow it to measure material thickness where there is no material the laser will be defocused. Wow that creates a nasty cut/kerf. Charing, minor flames, etc. Automatic and continuous focus will be an incredible advancement when and if it works as advertised.
Yeah it was 100% power at a slow 7 inches/min. Took about a minute and a half to cut and a total 3-1/2 minutes for the cut, score, and image engrave. For score and engrave used the same as on the Proofgrade Maple; score lines were at 85% power, 85 in/min and the engrave was a low power, 225 lines, and 170 in/min.
First - those are fantastic - especially the testing on the 0.43" solid oak cut (still can’t believe you got that in a single pass), and second, @dan is completely right…quit hiding your light…these are things a LOT of other people are interested in.
Great work. Excited about the work on the Oak. Don’t demean the “garage found” oak. It works perfect for this graphic. It might not be the best for some fancy script text engraves or a wedding photo, but I really like the grain showing through here.
The Oak was straight from the rough planer. It wasn’t as smooth as I would have had it for a real project. But yes, there is visible feathering that you can see on the sharp pointy end that is entirely due to the properties of Oak grain. No noticeable effect on any of the other edges.
Yes it is! All of these little details, discoveries, experiments, “failures” and learning experiments are interesting. It doesn’t have to be elaborate in order to shed light on the capabilities of this machine or the techniques used.
