Ideas for the hopper

You misread it…I am running 10.11 El Capitan.

Dan…I may try Inkscape again, but the learning curve for me was very steep. I have been practicing however, using Sketchup, per many recommendations on this forum. Do you know yet whether you might support that, also?

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We use sketchup for design, but it’s helpful to be fluent with a 2D tool as well. You can export from Sketchup to Inkscape (via SVG) and for many things it’s faster to work there.

There’s a steep learning curve to Inkscape, but my experience is that learning Illustrator is just as hard, if not more.

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Oops! :slight_smile:

After seeing so many people questioning how to both vent and use the filter (as well as whether the filter will be up to the task on its own), the ideal solution would be for the 'Forge and filter to be engineered in a way that the dirty air from the 'Forge can either be sent straight out the vent, or be directed down into and through the filter and then back up and out the existing vent outlet on the back of the 'Forge. I would envision a swappable unit that goes into the left end of the 'Forge to enable the down and back up path instead of the straight out of the base unit, with a lever on the filter that could be used to move baffles in that filter-enabled module and toggle the filter power so the people could chose between vent or filter with the throw of a lever, and still have the outflow go through their existing vent and out of the building.
I have have an idea how this vent reconfiguration thing could work, but it doesn’t yet exist outside my head. If it is evident that I should be mocking it up more formally, I will, but I am also not an engineer by trade, so it wouldn’t be perfect.

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The Glowforge has a connector to the air filter, which exhausts through many openings into the surrounding room. If you want to vent, don’t use the filter. If you use the filter, you can’t vent. The Glowforge plastics are final (the filter plastics are not) so that arrangement is not likely to change.

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Aside from disappointments in features that can’t be implemented, it is good to hear that the case design is finalized. Every little tidbit of info that moves the schedule closer to shipping is good to hear (or read).

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Sorry, @dan, my suggestion for venting even with the filter was not aimed at the current iteration, it was more in the spirit of possible improvements for 2.0 or beyond.
You did mention that the filter plastic isn’t finalized yet though, so if it is possible to tweak the filter so that all the outflow exits from one place, that will at least make it easier for those of us the need to implement something more for whatever reason can do so more easily! :slight_smile:

Hopper Request: Flipping Accuracy with two seperate patterns?

I have read about the feature that automatically lines up cuts when needing to flip something over. wondering if a different design pattern can be used on the flip side.

Example: if I had a design for a wooden spoon that was cut out with engraving a concave on one side, could I theoretically engrave the convex on the opposite side so that the profile would match up and effectively produce the 3D relief on both sides?

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In the embedded interview Dan address this feature in terms of finding corners on one side and then you get the go ahead to flip longitudinally it orients correctly. This is a feature and I have no doubts that it will be awesome to create as you describe.

Something else I was thinking last night that would be a good idea (and very well may already be in the works) is auto aligning for repeated cuts or engraving. (I know they already have auto re-align for passthrough) For example… Engraving usbs. Have it so that the GF will see each one on the bed and repeat the same engraving on each one, no matter where it is on the bed or orientation (to help with consistency in jobs)

Just a thought.

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That’s basically how the macbook/iphone engraving will work. Obviously doable, but they’d need to expand on the concept for generic objects. Good idea.

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Some detailed example uses would be helpful so we can understand what the feature would ideally do for you.

I guess the big thing (for me at least) would be say… You print out a sheet of… Say a logo… And there are multiple instances of the logo on the paper. Instead of manually dragging the path onto each logo to cut them out you would just do one and tell GF to look for others.

Other uses for me personally would be for engraving USBs and their boxes. It’s going to be a pain to try and align them over and over and then not have the same consistency as you would with this theoretical feature.

I have thought of jury-rigging some work arounds… but this could greatly help! :slight_smile:

I could be missing something here, but that seems to be what happened in the promo video when the airplane was reproduced in iterations. Although on second thought, I have no idea how consistent the alignment was for each of those iterations. Your USBs would obviously need to be placed pretty precisely.

I think I’d cut a tray out that would align the USBs and then use that. A bit more work to drop them all in the holes but once done should be good enough. I believe this was suggested elsewhere for multiple align every time problems.

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Sorry, I should have been more clear. :slight_smile: In the video it just cuts and engraves multiple iterations from a blank sheet. So it doesn’t really matter in terms of alignment. This suggested feature would identify existing objects and then engrave on the same place on each item. :slight_smile:

@ihermit2 yeah, that’s the workaround I was thinking of. :slight_smile:

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Are you sure? I just watch the clip again a couple of times, on the “Watch how it works” video on the main glowforge page. At 1:27 there is a two-second shot of the woman using an ipad to move the airplane onto what i think is a lid-camera shot from the 'forge, and it shows six separate pieces on the honeycomb.
Of course… that could also be a non-functional mockup app just for the video.

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Oh, maybe you’re right!! Hmmm… We’ll see I guess. :slight_smile:

Well, we don’t know if she positioned an airplane on every part in the tray.

And since the thing she was doing was a full cut-out, aligning to any slight skew doesn’t matter much. Engraving on an existing object and wanting every engrave centered and equidistant to the end would be more what the question at hand involves.

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