My name is Jim and I'm a

Everything Else
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Glowholic…Glow junkie…something! :astonished:

My PRU is located in my basement. It’s largely underground but has about 14" of exposed wall above ground. It’s poured concrete. It’s insulated so my heat in the winter does not leach into the earth. But that means the earth’s cool doesn’t leach into the basement during the summer. It’s not air conditioned but is dehumidified.

So it’s hot (85F outside) today. It’s 80F in the basement. But it’s 40% relative humidity so it’s pretty comfy.

My Glowforge PRU doesn’t want to play. There’s a temperature alert as soon as I turn it on. There’s an Amber button. This made me sad :slightly_frowning_face:

But I’ve got other lasers. So a project I’m doing to help out another 'forger is gonna be done on another laser (shhh…don’t tell anyone I’ve returned to the dark side :sunglasses:).

I’m cutting some numbers out. Just to show size and style in real life for him to use in a project of his own. Easy peasy.

But, first I save my Corel file to DXF (& PDF & AI as the laser can be finicky). Then I import it into the laser software. Now I don’t want to cut it all out of acrylic. One sample is going to be acrylic, the other set Baltic Birch. Both nominally 1/4".

Unlike the GFUI, I have to delete the objects I don’t want to cut instead of just telling it to ignore them. That means I’ll have to re-import the file again when I switch sets. And rest the focus (manually) since they’re not exactly the same thickness. First world problem I know. But irritating.

Good part is I can run a whole 24" piece in there so I can stripe the numbers across the bottom. (Dope slap - should have run them on the side so I can cut the end off and use the rest in the GF. :astonished:)

Fire it up. My last calibration template tells me the setting. Doesn’t work. Pieces aren’t cut out :roll_eyes: Sheesh. Probably needs cleaning. Dial it back. Resend it to the laser. Doesn’t work. :slightly_frowning_face: Beginning to get irritated. (Did I mention I had to set the focus by moving the bed & using a little stick? Or that I had to set the zero/zero for my project using a red dot laser attached to the head? Maybe I’m not starting to get irritated.)

Dial it back. Resend the file. Run it again. Sigh. Eff it, I’ll just do a second pass. I shoulda cleaned it before I stopped using it when the PRU arrived. It’s probably just luck there aren’t any mice or spiders living in it.

The chiller is reading 23.9C so it should be fine but maybe it’s warm :wink:

Anyway, I get the set done and then the acrylic ones.

But seriously I feel so 20th century. How can anyone do good work with tools like this? I’ve seen the future and it’s way better.

Here’s the project. Just numbers for Pete’s sake.

861×1160 112 KB

I really need a forge fix.

A/C in the basement or hack a cooling air stream? Only need it until my Pro comes.

But man o man, this laser is a freaking dino.

As the guys from Tested said, if you’ve never used another laser you won’t appreciate how much better the GF is.

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I have a feeling that they are going to have a fix for their fix soon so don’t despair.

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One of those room A/C units then you can also use it in other places if needed.

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THIS!!! This is exactly why I explained to my wife that a :glowforge: was my only shot at getting and using a laser. I’m not very handy, and I don’t want to mess around with something that’s really temperamental. As a designer, I already know how to use the tools to create the graphics, so give me a machine that doesn’t take a huge learning curve to operate or a ton of work to get things moving? YES! PLEASE! THANK YOU! I am one of those who (like you mention) will likely never be able to appreciate how incredible this machine is, but what little I have been able to guess at was more than enough to help me remain patient as I waited for it the past year and a half. Now, as an owner? I can tell you this machine has been everything I dreamed it would be and MORE!!! And I’m still only scratching the surface of what I can even do with it!

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What’s funny is this is the expensive good Redsail. 60W and pretty decent hardware. It’s not the incredibly finicky K40 (aka cheap Chinese laser).

I used to love this machine.

I feel cheap :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: I don’t love it anymore.

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They’re no doubt tweaking the settings as we type this up. I’ve also had to notify them since the update about a yellow button temperature error, although it didn’t kill the print. (Trust me - they’ll adjust it soon. They can’t have 73° ambient temps setting that off every day.)

Hope you notified them - they want an immediate head’s up on any “Amber Alerts”. :grinning:

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I didn’t. I figured I was operating it outside the specs so it’s not really an error.

But I will.

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i may be a weird hybrid of a guy who gets access to a quality, american made industrial laser this fall right around the same time i get my glowforge. my office has a request in to buy a universal (either PL4 or PL6, but 75 watt) that we’re hoping will go through soon and we will get it this fall.

so i may get to learn both sides of the equation at the same time.

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I still love my handibot cnc but I feel you. The luster is gone from cnc when you can drop a piece of material in the bed and push a button.

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I had a VLS6.60 at my last office. It was a lot of fun, but the software was a bit aggravating. The bosses also didn’t like the darker edges, so the pieces had to be hand sanded before assembly. :roll_eyes:

Having that laser was one of the things that made my wife and I decide to pull the trigger on the GF. Granted the depth of the pro is very small, but I distinctly recall that cutting anything thicker was fraught with problems. I tried to cut a 2" piece of wood once. That was a burny, hilarious fail.

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the cool thing for me is that i’ll get both. :wink: my own glowforge, easier to work with, plus the universal which will have a larger bed and a higher powered laser for the things i can’t do on GF.

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Downside for us both is that we can’t quit using Revit and focus on lasering. (I’m making assumptions, here)

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no revit skills whatsoever. i’m a graphic designer i an architecture firm. so i’ll be using Illustrator to make DXF files. currently do that and send the files to one of our other offices to cut things sometimes. but i don’t get to play/test and that office has a huge model shop where i have to find gaps in between making tons of models.

having one local means i can walk down the hall and putz around and try things out when the project staff isn’t using it. and i’m actually involved in helping to build are mini model shop. yay!

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I envy you. :slight_smile:

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i don’t envy you. i hear the bitching about revit all the time. :slight_smile:

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I got a red sail clone and I feel your pain, buddy. Since getting Glowforge, it just feels so good.

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what we need to invent is a glowforge chiller. Maybe a box is sits on with a drawer that you open to dump ice into then the air it intakes is nice and cool. Would that resolve the problem? does the Glowforge care about room temp? or just temp inside the machine? I was thinking about this with mine and really don’t want to buy an a/c unit.

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So I was going to put together my little fan/icebox hack tonight after I finished with the dino-laser and cutting the numbers.

Of course I finish and turn on the GF so I can have some light inside the case to get a sense of where the heat exchanger is and how the airflow might work. Same temp/humidity (80F/40%) tonight as last night’s amber temp alert.

Tonight, nope. It’s ready and waiting for me to send it some work. It’s toying with me. Sigh. Maybe it made a deal with the Redsail to make me use it. Or maybe GFHQ sent some new parameters.

I’ll know more tomorrow night after I run another couple of jobs. Tonight I’m just scratching my head. I may still build my icebox hack though just in case :slight_smile:

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hi jim, mighty fine name you got yourself, there. >_>

i was thinking about this, i wonder if there’s enough room to rest some tubing on it? you could have a little cooler on the floor, filled with ice, enough water to circulate, and a little pump.

or theoretically use your chiller to so the same task, should you decide you don’t need it hooked up to the other laser at all times…

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Plenty of room. The block looks to be about 4x6". But putting anything on the heat exchanger (my first thought) with an external connection like a hose means you’d have to modify the case or defeat the front door interlocks. My thought about making an air chiller that sits in front of the intake would let it cool the air going to the exchanger without affecting the case. The ideas about sitting it on a cooling drawer/box would also chill the air going in without impacting the case.

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