Disclaimer… very amateur.
The way the process has been described, the cloud software sends down streams of bits that are the actual commands to the steppers, laser switch and maybe more. This removes a massive amount of computation from the cpu in the machine.They do not require an enormous bandwidth. Dan has somewhere stated that there is an on board buffer for these, and that many jobs will fit into it.I believe that if Glowforge evaporates, or is purchased by an evil empire, there will be people out there who will be able to make a bridge between G code and these commands at the very least. Speaking out of massive ignorance, it may be that Mach3 already could do so.
Thanks. Do you know if (where) there is more detail about the workflow ?
There isn’t anything formal at this stage. Dan has said “… if you create an SVG with the in-house app, it’s very easy (drag and drop) to put it in the Glowforge UI” and has also mentioned that they have a print plugin for Illustrator which integrates well with their UI, if that gives you any clues, but really we will just have to wait and see
Here is an interesting topic.
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