In general, I agree that the Glowforge team appears to be sensible people and they do not want to implement a change to software that would alter the results we get from our Glowforges. However, they may not always have much of a choice, or they may do something that inadvertantly alters functionality for certain designs.
Choosing not to update or at least having the ability to delay the update has been the case we are all accostomed to when not talking about multiplayer games or websites. Are you all fighting to lose that ability when it comes to the Glowforge?
@palmercr: Although the famous rule is that 20% of the project takes 80% of the time, I agree that in software it is worse.
@Jules: I am glad to hear you feel that youâre getting even more than we were all promised and a totally great value for our money. Super awesome, and I agree as far as I can without having actually used a Glowforge. I just have some experience in electronics/robotics, and plenty of experience in software. It looks like Glowforge is doing a great job and I expect far fewer changes in the first year than some of the 3d printers, but I do expect changes. The team will be shifting away from any sense of âget it shipped and workingâ at the same time that they start getting feedback from thousands of machines. There will be discoveries, and the fastest way to resolve the problem if possible is a software update which you may not need or want in your situation.
@caribis2: I agree that safety to humans is probably âDone.â with a considerable margin of error. I disagree with the idea that only the waste of materials matters or that the release notes will always indicate every consequence. A release note of âBetter path predictionâ could, for safety to the forge reasons, stop the Glowforge from accepting a design you had previously run many times. My point is you have no way to go back to the software that could run the design.
How does path prediction stop a design from working? The max engrave area (which may currently be hard-set but might currently or in the future be maximized by calculations of the required space) is smaller than the max cut area because the head moves so quickly during engraving, youâre not supposed to go too close to the walls so that the space by the wall can be used to slow the head down before it smacks full-speed into a wall. Optimizing the paths used may change the speed and direction of the head at a part of your design near the edge, and it could in fact move the edge of workable area inwords. The guy optimizing the paths may have had not predicted how the print area is changed, and it may have not been changed on test prints even if it was changed When the design has a particular eliptical curve at the edge or some other special case.
Also, they might find with thousands of units out there that the engrave area, a particular speed, or some focus setting is not always safe for all units. I doubt it as thereâs probably a substantial margin of error on their settings, but these things happen because we are taking about a combination of software and hardware â it is less binary than âthe following line is a workaround for issue #1338 and can be removed when that is resolved.â
Consider the environment for example. Iâm sure it is not worth the cost to HP, Epson, and other makers of cheap little inkjet printers to thoroughly ground stuff just for the sake of a few dry environments, so those companies ship thousands of printers to dry regions ignoring the predictable static buildup â the printers with touch interfaces and no ground pin on the power cord pretty regularly register ghost touches on the control panel, ghosts that are even more likely to show up during a print job when the printer start charging capacitors, running motors, and dragging pieces of paper around. The rubber drive belts and rubber wheels on metal axles could practically be used to make a primative tesla coil. If you run the belts more slowly or give pauses then static buildup has more time to bleed off, therefore consistently high speeds may need to be cut back for the safety of all Glowforges in dry places and youâll be stuck with it even if youâre in the pacific northwest.