1: Agree except for “big” savings. I suspect that it isn’t that much of a savings. (Because the Dan himself said so directly. A troupe of GF staffers with a fulltime focus on the GF says that optimization isn’t worth it, I tend to believe them over my gut feelings.)
2: You may be right, but all I said was that overheating was a real issue and you should be aware of it, so we agree. See option #1, “why?” doesn’t matter so much if they’re being honest about the time savings, and I have no reason to suspect there’s a conspiracy afoot to keep my Glowforge down.
534 inches of cutting, with optimized back and forth paths, I saved a total of one minute. I wouldn’t consider that a “big difference” - just “a difference.”
Hypotheticals and theory are one thing, but I’d say the proof is in the pudding on real-world cutting situations.
I’ve got 20 minute jobs that I’ve shaved up to 5 minutes by optimising - but to be honest it is such a pain to do by hand and then the GF will ignore it.
I agree, the benefit is small(ish), but it bugs me on two counts. (1) I keep saying over and over again - there is a really trivial fix that would make a significant difference and (2) it really bugs my OCD tendencies that the thing cuts in random places, in random orders and in random directions!!!
I guess it doesn’t matter much to me because it’s just a hobby and have all the time in the world when I’m making stuff but I have seen the Glowforge make some pretty unexplainable moves. One that comes to mind was a project that had words on the left, middle and right sides of the sheet (one engrave file with one color) The machine engraved the left side and the right side together making the head move the complete width of the page and skipped the middle text as the head was traversing over it, only to go back and engrave the middle text afterward. There was no logic to the plan. If it was about over heating I would argue that there was more overheating when it had to go back to do the middle words separately.
It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.