How flame resistant is the tray/bed of the Glowforge?

[volivaa]

My contribution was to show that ozone depleting bromine, chlorine, and iodine were not necessary to put out fires. I also developed the predictive model that showed that putting the hydrogen on the center carbon would reduce toxicity and improve performance.

[Jules]

It’s got an aluminum lining inside, (visible in some of @marmak3261’s videos and pics), and the top is glass, not acrylic.

[chrgeup]

So, really you helped develop this much more survivable fire extinguishing gas. Impressive. As a safety engineer, I keep an eye on nozzle placement (cabin interiors) and concentration levels (for effectiveness, and egress). - Rich

[MikeH]

@MikeH

how resistant is the plastic case to a fire that gets started in the cutting/engraving zone?

This is specifically addressed to @dan or anyone else at Glowforge that is qualified to answer.

[volivaa]

Yes, I was in R&D at Great Lakes Chemical and had the only PC (286) in the whole department of 200+ people in those days. As an independent researcher, I have kept up with the new research and I have a new game changing fire extinguishing agent in the pipeline.

[rpegg]

Com’on Mike. You’ve been around the forum long enough to know he doesn’t give a complete answer to those type of questions.

@dan

QA testing on the plastic body’s heat resistance. Heat doesn’t always come with fire.

As you might imagine, this is one of those places around which our friendly neighborhood lawyer recommend we be extremely noncommunicative. But yes, we do a great deal of design and testing around heat in many forms.

@dan

That said, the design was created from plastic that softens rather than ignites, and as you probably saw, the lid is a very solid piece of glass. It’s designed to fail in a way that does not spread any fire.

[palmercr]

I think the pre-release machines have solid sheets of aluminium but production will be a metallic coating on the plastic. It looks like this was added in haste, so perhaps needed for safety approvals and so another reason they didn’t ship.

We have to speculate on most things in the forums as there is no information forthcoming at the moment apart from @marmak3261 as the only user not under NDA. This is odd because they were supposed to ship now, so the manual should have been ready. If it isn’t then that is another reason they could not ship.

[Jules]

The Guidelines have been updated to disallow speculation on the safety aspects because of liability considerations for GlowForge. It’s a recent thing.

@palmercr

I think the pre-release machines have solid sheets of aluminium but production will be a metallic coating on the plastic. It looks like this was added in haste, so perhaps needed for safety approvals and so another reason they didn’t ship.

Why would you think they will change the design from pre-release to production? The only thing that is likely to change will be suppliers for the parts, not the design itself.

[jordanloshinsky]

Sorry. @bookwyrm made comment of extinguishers later on and it side tracked me.

[palmercr]

@Jules

Why would you think they will change the design from pre-release to production?

Dan said it somewhere. I expect a plastic coating is much cheaper but they could not wait for it to come through, so they had to go with a quick solution for pre-release and that is the reason they are not the same as production.

I can’t see how prospective customers speculating can cause liability to Glowforge and where was this ban announced?

[Jules]

@palmercr

Dan said it somewhere. I expect a plastic coating is much cheaper but they could not wait for it to come through, so they had to go with a quick solution for pre-release and that is the reason they are not the same as production.

I remember him saying the plastic had a coating of some kind, but that was likely in addition to the aluminum panels. It makes no sense at all to change out that aluminum lining - the whole thing would have to be re-designed.

@palmercr

I can’t see how prospective customers speculating can cause liability to Glowforge and where was this ban announced?

It hasn’t been posted in the Announcements section, but @dan has mentioned it recently in other threads and closed them down.

Might not be a bad idea for him to post an Announcement notice about the updated guidelines and make it official, so casual browsers know to go check it out…

(i removed the link here )

[palmercr]

@Jules

I remember him saying the plastic had a coating of some kind, but that was likely in addition to the aluminum panels. It makes no sense at all to change out that aluminum lining - the whole thing would have to be re-designed.

It would make no sense to have both as nothing will get through the aluminium, laser or RFI, but I think he said they had developed a coating that was laser proof on its own. That would be cheaper to make, less assembly and less weight.

[palmercr]

I found the quote:

@dan

Laser Shielded

We’ve added a proprietary coating to our case that can repel the full force of the Glowforge laser - even though the laser can’t get there in the first place. It’s part of our commitment to design the Glowforge to perform even if something goes wrong. Our pre-release units have a light but effective adhesive shielding, and we’re switching to something more durable and easier to manufacture shortly. We want you to have the peace of mind of a consumer appliance like an oven or fridge, not an industrial tool that you need to worry about.

[Jules]

I’m not concerned about it. He’s said a couple of times that the laser can’t get to the plastic.

The original question was how flame resistant the plastic was though, and the answer was that a fail, if it occurs, is designed to melt the plastic, not let it catch fire.

@post:44

Thanks so much for the thoughtful note. It’s something I worry about too, as I’ve had a giant industrial laser in my garage for a year or more.

I’ll start at the end: Don’t leave Glowforge unattended during prints. It’s unlikely anything will need your attention, but if it does, you should be nearby.

That said, the design was created from plastic that softens rather than ignites, and as you probably saw, the lid is a very solid piece of glass. It’s designed to fail in a way that does not spread any fire.

We’ve also added a number of safety systems to avoid all the major causes of fires we’ve seen in laser postmortems. For example, we won’t leave the head blowing air on the ember left from a cut - we shut off the air when the cut is done, unlike most systems. As another example, we can detect the collisions that are usually the start of a problem with our onboard accelerometers.

This isn’t something I’d let a child use unattended, but I worry about it less than, say, my blender when they’re around.

–dan

Edit: Okay, guess we’ll wait to see what it is. I’m still not worried.

[palmercr]

No I am not concerned about it either. It does explain some of the delay to full production though.

[Jules]

Dan explained the stepped approach to full production in the Q&A. They made the choice to delay full roll out to everyone at once, in order to run more tests on the machines for long-term issues that they otherwise might have missed.

It wasn’t an easy decision for them to make.

It’s not something that they can quantify though, so there is no one thing that you can point to and say “This is what caused it to be later than was planned.” It was a lot of little things that added up to something they didn’t want to ship, because a lot of little fiddly issues can cause enough problems for them with return shipping that it doesn’t make sense to send them all out. It didn’t meet their standards.

Just no easy answer to that question.

[bookwyrm]

Well said. I also have a box of baking Soda in my laser toolbox, just in case some plastic has an imperfection or something that may ignite. I haven’t personally had more than a small flare up solved by opening the lid and spritzing some water on it yet (and that only happened once while trying to figure out settings to cut cork).

As someone else mentioned, my main concern was flammability and survivability of the Glowforge itself in the event that something does flare up while cutting, given that this is basically a consumer device and doesn’t even require basic training/warnings like most maker space lasers. And let’s face it - many people don’t read manuals.

[Tom_A]

@bookwyrm

I also have a box of baking Soda in my laser toolbox

Sure… And that’s technically an inexpensive answer. But

@dwardio

Halotron bottle mounted across room from GF

It puts out fires with no solid residue. If I want to shoot something into my 'forge, it’s gonna be something that won’t do any damage at all (or require intense cleaning up after).

• Tom

[bookwyrm]

Fair enough.

I’m not carrying a halotron bottle with me to a maker space though (which is where my laser time happens currently). And shop vacs will generally clean up any baking soda mess if needed and are a very good thing to have near any laser anyways to clean up all the droppings that tend to accumulate in/under the honeycomb. I’m hopeful that the tip-out tray that’s been mentioned for the GF will at least help with that.

[Tom_A]

@bookwyrm

I’m not carrying a halotron bottle with me

Actually, they make small bottles. But to each their own. Makerspace is one thing… my Glowforge is another.

• Tom