Maker Faire NYC (Oct 1st & 2nd)

That is awesome! I forgot to take a picture of his booth.

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Got so tickled by that typo, forgot to comment on the displayā€¦awesomeness! :smile:

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My first maker faire, what a great time! So much going on, it can be a little confusingā€¦

So great to meet @bailey, who was sweet enough to take time and chat with me and my boy, even with how much she had going onā€¦

Whoever said it first from the other make faire: The GF is frikken huge! Much bigger in person than it looks on video. Totally beautiful, though, no doubt about it.

Couldnā€™t wait in line with a 5 year old, but still really nice to see. I canā€™t send video to the comp Iā€™m using at the moment, will try to upload those later (nothing special / different than you have seen already)ā€¦

But hereā€™s a couple of pics from the awesome display table.

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Wheeee! I see many cool things on the table! :grin:
(Whatā€™s the little walnut gizmo next to the wavery coaster in the middle of the table?)

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I think I met you as well!

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Hey @bailey, Iā€™m sure you are super busy, but if you get a chance Iā€™d still love to see photos of your stamps!

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That is a little alligator lapel pin type of thingy. Not entirely sure what it is meant for, nor really sure what a lapel pin is. But that seems an apt description.

I had picked that one up to see how fragile it was, and it is remarkable robust.

@cynd11: I had really meant to get back to the booth and snag pictures of the stamps. I lurked nearby briefly, but couldnā€™t remember what I wanted to do, so wading through the crowd did not appeal to me. The stamps were sadly way in the back on the table where everyone was busy drawing their soon-to-be-engraved mementos, so arenā€™t likely to show up in anyoneā€™s booth shots. :frowning:

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I appreciate the intention!

Likee the liā€™l gator! :relaxed:

It wasnā€™t there when the team left last week so Iā€™m guessing it was something one of the visitors printed for themselves. :wink:

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First off Iā€™d like to thank @bailey for her hospitality this past Saturday.

My wife and I arrived @ the faire at about 9:30. We didnā€™t get in till about 10:15ā€™ish and B-Lined to the GF Booth. In which I ran into @takitus, @polarbrainfreeze, @joe & @jacobturner. There was already a line for the demo cuts from the PDF that was provided beforehand. They had 2 units at the booth and the 3rd was at the Show & Tell that was starting at 10:30.

The very first observation is how big the Glowforge actually is. I KNEW the dimensions- Iā€™ve measured the desk that its going to be placed on. But ā€˜IRLā€™ itā€™s pretty damn big.

The unit on the far left of the booth had some small differences from the units we have seen in the pictures. i.e. Hinge covers on the interior. Itā€™s seems that particular unit is a early prototype? I was not able to get a straight answer about that.

Hereā€™s a rundown of what I saw.

  • Basically they ran one pre-canned demo all day. End users goes to one line to get the design sheet. Then goes into another to get it ā€˜scannedā€™ and engraved. Itā€™s does that very well. (As long there is no wifi issues.)

  • From what Iā€™ve gather from the Show & Tell, Nothing really new was discussed.

  • The demo parts for the most part are the same ones that weā€™ve all seen before.

  • Will Smith is truly a nice guy. We talked for about 10 mins about CNCs and closed-loop systems and the future of CAD.

  • The unanimous answer about the delivery date is still ā€˜All pre-order units in December.ā€™ No matter how carefully I worded the question- I got the same answer.

  • Beta units outside of Seattle is going to happen ā€˜Soonā€™ I truly hope one lands in VA.

  • The lid on the Glowforge is weighty. The hinges will hold itā€™s own weight from full vertical to about 30 degrees before gravity takes over.

  • The lid will be a smudge magnet. If you are OCD about people touching your monitor- have your microfiber cloth at the ready.

  • The lighting in the unit is very nice. Evenly lit. Not a harsh/hard color temp.

  • I am assuming the Glowforge display units where in draft/medium mode (as far as print quality) The feed rate look fairly low to me. But the cuts that it did where nice. Pictures / Video Below.

  • Did I mention that the Glowforge is larger in person?

  • I asked @bailey about if there will be a storage cap on end users designs in the design catalog and will there a means of exporting them if there is a limit or just for safe keeping (Remember a backup is not a backup if you keep one secondary copy of the original. Make Backupsā€¦ DOOOO IT.) She said she would get back to me on that.

  • I also asked if there was a means of exporting the vector that the GF Cloud makes of a image from the lid camera. She also said sheā€™d get back to me on that.

  • I asked about the filter unit. As they were not at faire. (they had a massive industrial unit for the units at the show.) I was told that they have smart people working on it and it works great. Well- Okay. Why havenā€™t we seen any videos of it in action? shrug

For now, Seeing a glowforge first hand has brought my spirit up a bit. But Iā€™d still like to see a couple things in action. Greyscale rastering. Manual focus. Pass-thru functionality and duplexing. Basically anything that we have not seen before. There are quite a few new beta users out there. But the post from them seems to have slowed down.

On to the pictures and videos.

My wife asked a couple good key questions in this video.

General overview of the booth.

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Thank you for a very detailed report.

This leaves me wondering, what was all the hype?

@dan kept talking like something amazing was going to be at the NY Fair.

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Ah yeah, I forgot to mention that. I asked the folks manning the 'forges on the left of the booth.
They had no clue what I was talking about. Unless dan was referring to Will Smith being there?

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Nice design on that laptop/pad/tablet/whatever it was! (Might have to rethink the etching thing once I get comfy.)

Thanks for the pics and vid! :smiley:

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Thank you, I enjoyed the photos and videos!

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Nice interrogation.
The file limit and the lid tension are questions I had also.

With your equipment experience, having actually touched a Glowforge, the build quality is as you anticipated?
Thanks for the post, eases my pain of not being able to attend. :sunglasses:

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For build quality they were very high considering these are preproduction units. I assume final quality will be even higher.

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Built quality is very good. Nothing cheap or flimsy about it. The honeycomb tray is much heavy then Iā€™ve originally thought. All the plastic parts in the front of the unit have a nice sharp snap fit to them. Not a interference fit. But tight enough to not make noises during operation or loosen over time. As for noise level that was impossible to gauge in a outdoor venue like a Maker faire. The smell was very low. So the exhaust was doing it job.

Basically, The hardware looks like something thatā€™s MSRPā€™d for 3k (As it should).

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@henryhbk and @karaelena, thank you gentlemen!

The pictures that attendees post are fodder for those of us imprisoned by daily life/finances - thanks for that!

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It was mostly geography than anything else should since Boston to NYC is a tolerable drive

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