Does anyone know what future additions we can expect on the Glowforge? I remember reading there were rumors of a possible 3D printing head attachment and other upgrades. Are these still being considered? Does anyone know if a cnc head could be possible?
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cnc? never ever
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The head is held in place by magnets, making it easy to swap for something else, but a CNC mill head would be a disaster inside a laser cutter. Imagine the dust and chips everywhere. And the motors are probably nowhere near strong enough to move a mill - those are heavy, and need force to push through material while cutting.
Perhaps a 3d printer extruder? Though you’d need power for a hot end and a way to feed filament. So, no.
Perhaps a pen/pencil? The Glowforge could make a nice plotter, I suppose.
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No news that I’ve heard yet. I think they are focusing on delivery first, upgrades second.
A CNC router head would be unlikely, because of the amount of dust. However, they could include a dust collecting shroud that could help, but it might be more than just a head attachment at that point.
There was alot of discussion awhile back on this. There was talk of a 3d printing head, a vinyl cutter head, a drawing/sharpie holder head, angled laser, etc. Personally, I would like a diode laser head.
Here is the speculation thread I started about this.
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A cake icing dispensing head, a la Tooli! Oh, the cupcakes!
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Coming from the world of professional grade lasers (Epilog) it would be great to see a rotary add on so we could properly do round/tubular items like glassware, bottles, rolling pins, etc.
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That’d be great but pretty constrained by Z-axis in the current configuration… I don’t think that will be happening, on v1, without some major hacks.
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Well, we should be able to work on round objects 2" diameter or smaller. So no wine bottles, but engraving pens would be pretty cool.
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Nope. Espresso machine. Heard it from a guy who knows a guy who knows.
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Maybe a Kerug Coffee Head dispenser
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Of all the possible things they might add on to the GF, a rotary attachment is tops on my list. 3d printers, inkjets, all that other stuff is already done better by dedicated machines… But there is no replacement for rotational indexing, and it would make my laser cutter a better laser cutter.
I agree! I’d happily pay for a fixture that could grab things (less than 2" across) and rotate them in the GF.
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Usually, on units with rotary add on they pull the honeycomb bed and it goes all the way in the bottom of the machine. What kind of depth are we talking about since I have yet to be getting mine (maybe in JAN.)?
There’s 1/2 an inch between the laser head and the top of the crumb tray, and just over 1.5 inches for the height of the crumb tray. So you can remove the crumb tray and etch things up to 2 inches tall.
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Maybe a new head could/would port the beam a different angle towards a stationary rotary tool; in which case there could be a much larger range of diameter for objects.
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That is what I was thinking. You could replace the whole crumb tray with some rotational apparatus, and replace the head with something that pew pews sideways.
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This was discussed in some detail quite a while back 
I hope Glowforge was listening 
With an angled lense that locks to the x(?) axis and a stationary rotary tool, the depth limit could basically be anything that could fit inside the glowforge
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