One of the hottest topics in the beta and pre-release stage which continues to this day. There are many other features announced that needed attention. This topic is a good read through for them.
If you think it works, then it works. Honestly, there are a lot of projects where the kerf is so minimal, it doesn’t matter. I did some 1/4" walnut last night with some tabs and slots. Just through in 1/4" because the material was generally that thick. Four pieces lined up perfectly to fit into a fifth piece with nine slots to for the nine tabs. No glue needed.
But there are many cases where kerf is crucial. the Glowforge can cut with such precision that the kerf does matter on inlays and acrylic. For the time being it is a design step for the user rather than a laser operation in the GFUI.
I think of something like the “stamp” feature in an Epilog. I have done a bunch of reading and testing to figure out a way to get a nice 3D engrave that does shoulders on relief letters. Inkscape doesn’t have a “glow” function like Illustrator or Photoshop. I use Gimp so seldom that I haven’t spent the time trying to find a workflow for this. Tried gradient meshes and all sorts of things.
Eventually I went to Onshape and came up with this:
Then I went into Meshlab following @takitus’s excellent tutorial to get this:
Went back to Onshape to raise the height of the letters. It actually did a fairly good 3D engrave, but still fairly rounded and no sharp bevels. Getting the shoulders engraved with depth over such a short distance for such small letters is a challenge. I’m still thinking about it.
Some of the OpenSCAD folks could come up with a good script for this I’m sure.
So having a functionality like “stamp mode” or “auto kerf compensation” would be cool. We’ll see what they come up with. I’d say they have something in mind, but getting the camera alignment straightened out with the new calibration routine and Set Focus are a great step toward fulfilling all the promised features. That pass through alignment seems to be the focus for right now.