Hello @Dan and @staff
I know you day hasn’t been quite as bright as you would have wanted but I hope you are doing better now
I fell like my question wasn’t answered on the live Q&A so I’ll ask it now the head of our precious GF is removable due to the new accessories you are planning on creating…
A) have you created any of those ideas already or are they just ideas
B) when might we have a chance to see them
C) prizing
D) viability… to be entirely honest are they actually happening or are they just a big dreamy maybe
Best wishes and thank you so much for your time,
Mary
I will let the staff respond; but I have some speculation.
I suspect that new accessories are just ideas.
I suspect we won’t see them until at least 6 months after every person who has ordered a Glowforge is lasering away.
I choose not to speculate on pricing.
I suspect that today there is a big dreamy maybe, and in a year or two they may actually start showing us some ideas.
I think you have great questions, Mary. Dan did say in the live Q&A that he doesn’t devote even one minute a month to Glowforge 2.0 or a replacement for what we have. If he has time the last two months to consider what future widgets may work in the expansion port, I imagine it hasn’t been more than 10 minutes.
I could certainly be wrong. I did a giggling happy dance while reading the schedule delay email because of this very thing. (and the 3D engrave.) I’m excited to see what they come up with.
My thought is along the same lines. Maybe slightly more than ideas if some of the specs of the head connection were chosen with the accessories in mind (e.g. if you’re going to do 3D printing, you need enough amps for a hot end). Also, as soon as manufacturing starts they’re going to want to divert people to this kind of thing to keep from a big hiccup as the market saturates. Pricing: low enough that people won’t simply buy a dedicated machine for the same thing.
I appreciate having a removable, plug-and-play head design (mainly because it makes replacement easier), but given the max height of 2" under the laser (at least going by what @dan mentioned in the last update), does anyone honestly think that Z-height is useful in a 3D-printing application? I have a 12"x12"x12" Prusa i3v, and I would not find this GF upgrade practical at all. Just my 2¢.
Otherwise, I really don’t know. I had a long conversation with my brother, a mechanical engineer, who uses all sorts of crazy tools all the time. We tried to speculate on attachments and also how the Z “limitation” affects things. We discussed the concept of cutting the bottom of the case off in order to increase the height of things we could do. But after hearing in last night’s Q&A about all of the insane sensors they’re building in for safety (of which I’m not opposed!), I’m not even sure the unit would work if I did that. In the end, we kinda shrugged and said “Guess we’ll see what they come up with!”
This isn’t a claim that 3D printing would be terribly useful, just a minor clarification: The depth for lasering is 2", but that includes the clearance for the focal length of the laser lens, so it’s not as if something 2" thick is butting up against the bottom of the laser head. You might have more like 3-4". Still not terribly interesting for most applications, I can think of some things (e.g. topo tiles) where 11x20x3 would be useful.
Someone with much more specialized expertise than me could tell whether a pick&place (half the space for the board, half for components) would make any sense. Also interesting: the apparently serious mass of the laser head suggests that the drive system might have enough oomph to handle at least some material-removal tasks, although the swarf problem would be a big deal.
I’m sorry I didn’t answer your questions well during the Q&A! When the entire Glowforge was just paper sketches, we did a rough design for a variety of accessories, and designed the interface to accommodate then. Since we started developing the Glowforge itself, all we’ve done is think about them.
We have a hard time with dates, so I’ll call any specific product designs a ‘big dreamy maybe’ for now.
I figure there’s probably about 3" between the head and the floor. Maybe someone who has one would be kind enough to measure between the floor under the crumb tray and the bottom of the bracket that the head attaches to. We know there’s at least 2", because that’s the thickness of material that the Glowforge laser can accommodate, and we know it’s less than 4" because the Glowforge comes with a 2" focal length lens.
I think it really depends. I build 3D printers for my job and part of it isn’t looking at what people a re making. I would say that about half of people would be fine with the two inches. They print quadcopter parts, fixturing, etc. the other half print on average about 6-8 inches tall. So I think it really just depends on what you want to do with it. I know for the projects that I want to do I want much more z height but I do see potential if they could print electronics and circuit boards. I co
the head of our precious GF is removable due to the new accessories you are planning on creating…