I saw a post on reddit where someone using a non-glowforge machine had created a test card for engrave and cut that varied speed and power.
Before I waste a lot of time creating the test card, I figured I’d ask here first.
If I do have to create it, it seems like a very manual process, since I’m not aware a way to send speed and power to the machine. is there a way to setup an external profile that will set values for me to avoid having to enter everything manually?
Best I have seen/heard is you just make everything a different color in your design program, but you still have to enter the values in the GUI. You can’t set it up to automatically assign values. Although once you do it one time, you can save those settings as a manual setting and just choose it next time you need to test.
and there is now way to export and share those settings?
I see that someone posted a feature request in 2018…it was acknowledged, and then apparently went nowhere.
it seems like such a straightforward feature. I wonder what the obstacle is? The only issue I could imagine is that it would easily demonstrate variance in the output of the machines that might cause some confusion.
that said, it would likely prevent a lot of waste.
I just posted a very direct question to technical support asking for guidance.
I’ll let you know what I find out.
I’ll let you know what you will find out already:
“No we don’t do that, great idea, I’ll tell the dev team!”
Then nothing.
And you’re right this seems like such a no brainer, but generally speaking of it’s not about subscriptions or proofgrade it doesn’t get done. I’m not saying this to bum you out or bag on Glowforge, just trying to help you as you set your expectations.
I hope I’m wrong and you get a better response but I suspect that’s almost exactly what they will say.
There are several available here…
Another cut test
this is useful to narrow down specifics.
Also, this is very useful as it uses very little wood…
Depth Adjustments - #5 by rbtdanforth
And this…
New material cut test method
and several more I cant find ATM
They’ve implemented dozens of suggestions that have nothing to do with PG or subscriptions, but yeah ones that have to do with permanent settings are still in-house only AFAIK.
What you can do, and it’s quite easy though time consuming the first time, is Set up an engrave/cut test (I use this one) and then save the settings as custom. So Create the setting for the first cut, Save As Cut “Full-10” (or whatever) - all the way through Cut “Full-100”. Then do it again, but this time as Engraves “Full-10-270” (or whatever) through “Full-100-1340”.
Then when you want to test you only need to click on each of the custom settings you need for that material to set it up.
I think they are looking for a file where they won’t have to enter all the settings for each step.
Pretty hard to do when each step is a different setting. However, you can do it once and save for the future, or it might save the settings if you download it after.
I know that but apparently the op of this thread doesn’t.
Fwiw, I understand that I can go in and create custom settings to get this done.
I’m just annoyed that every person who wants to do this has to waste the same amount of time.
granted, you can make a test with a small set of variations, but I’d rather have something with, say 40 subtests (speed over power).
Imaging if it were possible to export a set of custom settings, or more preferably, if there were a feature/setting that allowed you to correlate a red to speed and green to power (clamped, of course). Then we could pass around a cut test with the colors set up appropriately.
it’s just not that difficult a problem.
I love this response. 
I will counter with "If they would open source part of the driver, I would do it for them for free.
I wish I was that computer literate!
I agree [1], and posted about it in 2019.
https://community.glowforge.com/t/a-materials-wiki/37281/19?u=evansd2
That’s why I’m not painting a terribly optimistic picture about this getting made for you.
I also talked with them about a relatively simple way to make color codes correspond to settings via a text element in the svg. It seemed really simple and doable but no progress there either. [I can imagine the thinking was something like ugh explaining color codes and parseable settings shorthand to the average non technical user sounds awful and makes us no money, so how about we… don’t…?” Which to be fair is a valid response from a entity that exists to make money]
In case you’re curious the way GF does it now is via specifically formatted style elements in the svg. It’s super basic and material agnostic, so they can say “lines with this style are cuts” and “lines with that style are scores”… then the ui looks at your PG material and applies the proper settings to the job step.
If you think about it that’s actually kinda slick, making the svg setting-agnostic and streamlines setting up new files to work across all their material offerings. What it doesn’t do is help us with making our own pre-set files, so we’re back to square one.
that said, it’s easy with a lot of assumptions. For example, we can early sidestep legal liability issues on this side of the problem, but Glowforge can’t ignore that. We can ignore the depressing reality that a large number of users insist on using the UI in mobile or tablets, making the interface godawful, but Glowforge can’t. We can prioritize things that would be helpful or cool for advanced users, and ignore things that appeal to new users and draw non-technical people in… Glowforge can’t. While we may think the issue is not that difficult it might be really tricky to balance against everything else. Still want the feature but I’m not unsympathetic about the forces that might be preventing it. ↩︎
sigh…all good points…still aggravating.
I might be able to automate the custom settings using macro scripting, but it would still mean that I’d have a LOT of custom settings to assign. gets rid of some of the tedium, but not all of it…
With a little experience, you’ll find something like that is completely unnecessary.
Yeah this is a good point.
Tests like that are overkill, probably why you don’t see a thriving community of people who are making better and better tests. I rarely test engraves anymore, and when necessary cut tests are really simple.
is hiring: 