Investigative photography at Maker Faire 2016 - Bay Area

So much goodness on this one thread! Thank you for capturing and sharing so much! THE ANTICIPATION IS KILLING ME!

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Thank you so much for this!!! My mouth is watering in anticipation!! Haha!

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Good job!

Really liked the, undocumented, video of the honeycomb coming out! :wink:

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Cool photos! Did you notice how long the dryer hose was? I’ve not been able to find that spec anywhere, just the diameter. I’m going to have to get creative with my window vent setup, and dryer hoses aren’t super common here (bc dryers aren’t!). Also, where did the hoses vent at the faire? :fog:

It’s a 4 inch hose, eight feet long. (Dan mentioned it in that live feed that they did after the announcement.)

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I doubt these ones were 8 feet long. They went from above the table to under the table.

Your hose should be as long as needed for your space. With the caveat being not to be TOO long, but where that definition comes into play may be the 8 feet @Jules mentions, not sure.

An excessively long dryer hose means that the fans won’t be strong enough to force the air out to the other end. So the GlowForge won’t maintain the negative pressure desired to keep all of the smoke inside the unit.

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Oh yeah, I’m sure he meant the hose was eight feet extended - they tend to bunch up a lot smaller than that, and you can cut them smaller if needed.
(But depending on how far from the window you are, you might need the full eight feet to reach it, which was why i asked about the extended length for the live feed.) :relaxed:

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My memory recalls the hose spec being eight feet of hose with two ninety degree bends. It is based on the exhaust fan(s) they are using.

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The two 90 degree bends were just something folks were talking about buying separately to get the unit closest to a wall as possible. The package will only have a flexible hose similar or exactly like a dryer vent hose. Don’t know whether it will be metal or plastic.

Edit: Oh I think I understand what you meant now. That the specified exhaust flow assumed 8 ft of hose with two 90 degree bends. Yes. Can’t remember an actual post but that might be accurate.

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They are including a hose. :grinning:

Indeed, but when I googled ‘standard dryer hose’ the length appeared to be varied. I can’t go to the store in the US and check myself, but I suppose I could have sent a minion…

Holy cow! These photos are great. They answered questions I had only vaguely thought about – like how I would clean little bits from the honey comb tray. I didn’t even realize it would pull out like that. They just though of everything. Lol.

I know it’s not really important, but the glowforge is way prettier than those other lasers. Even the button is prettier. Although, with that one laser you can pretend you’re launching missiles during the cold war. Which I guess is pretty fun in it’s own right.

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I suppose there are stores (Walmart maybe?) that sell pre-cut lengths. But home repair stores that I am familiar with sell hose at whatever length you ask to have it cut, then charge you by the foot.

I was just brainstorming this morning how cool it would be to do acrylic letters set into hardwood as a sign to hang on the front door. My wife is big on decorating for each season, so I’d do different color letters for each holiday (red and green for Christmas, orange for Halloween, etc.). Cool to see Dan and the guys use the concept for the glow forge flag!

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Wow. Excellent report. Very thorough and enjoyable to read.

Thanks

I’ve done that actually. Well not the color changing part but you could easily do it with flat magnets and thin metal…
I;ll have a looksee if I can find a pic of it.

If you mean something where what it says is static, but the color of the text changes seasonally (like family name, street address, or a general welcome sign), you could do it more easily with a wooden sign cut clear through, and then colored acrylic back panels.

If the whole sign changes, then two tone acrylic and a full swap out of signs is pretty easy, though that pulls back from the nice hardwood.

Unless you mean a free floating sign that would be seen from both sides… then emulating the approach used for the flag is indeed the only way to go.

I’ve done some acrylic LED signs using programmable color changes with LED strips (like this: Amazon.com) which have a little remote control to change the color (or let it cycle). They’re showing unavailable now but Amazon shows a lot of other similar ones. They have 4 strips of lights (which can be daisy chained or cut to length as desired). Mounted in the bottom (or top) of an aluminum channel frame and wired into a 5VDC power supply. These came with USB connections but are easy to clip and wire to batteries or a power supply. For a house sign, it would be pretty easy to build all of that into a wood or acrylic bottom frame of the sign with a switch and a light sensor inline so it only turns on when it’s dark.

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Loved all the pics. Thank you for sharing them.