Tube Health Status

[lairdknox]

@palmercr

@jrnelson

Just think of them as a really expensive, hopefully long-lived incandescent.

I don’t think that is a good analogy because incandescent filaments don’t fade much and don’t age while off. They fail catastrophically, usually when switched on from cold.

I think there are two ageing effect with lasers. When running some of the gas gets chemically converted into something else due to the high energy plasma. When off some gas leaks though the seals. So they normally lose power slowly.

I think when they catastrophically fail it is due to a seal breaking. For example I heard of one failing at a local hackerspace because a terminal arced and got hot enough to compromise the seal.

Actually incandescent filaments do age like that. The gas inside the glass is there to help keep the filament from degrading too quickly and it can out gas over time. They are just operated at lower extremes and have a longer history of innovation.

But that might be picking nits a bit.

[rand]

Ummmm…

[palmercr]

@lairdknox

Actually incandescent filaments do age like that.

Maybe they fail due to leakage but they don’t get noticeably dimmer over time like lasers and florescent tubes, which is what my point was. They work fine up until they suddenly don’t, which is not the way lasers normally fail.

[takitus]

Amazon runs some of the biggest data stores in the world, and the largest marketplace, and is responsible for keeping billions of people’s data secure. They have an amazing library of code available to them. Something like this is peanuts. Nowhere near CIA level stuff. Their work is scary. Same with NSA

[jrnelson]

yeah, i’m aware of what they do.

[lairdknox]

@palmercr

@lairdknox

Actually incandescent filaments do age like that.

Maybe they fail due to leakage but they don’t get noticeably dimmer over time like lasers and florescent tubes, which is what my point was. They work fine up until they suddenly don’t, which is not the way lasers normally fail.

Sure they do, just not as noticeable. But that was why I mentioned the part about nitpicking.

Light bulbs have the advantage of 200 years of innovation. In another 100 years the laser tube might be as robust.

[karaelena]

@nathan_burley

Will you guys be monitoring these things remotely with an eye to maybe adding that feature later if possible?

@dan

Great feature for the hopper! We don’t have ways to directly measure tube life but may be able to develop software to estimate it.

Update to the update: We'll sell replacement tubes (discussion)

Unfortunately at this point all we can tell you is that we’ll make the spare parts available. We should have more information before you have to decide whether or not to accept delivery of your Glowforge. I know that might mean you need to cancel now, and I apologize for letting you down. I know it will frustrate some people, but we can keep this feature without adding delay if (and only if) we put off answering a host of questions that require lawyer, user experience, and engineering tim…

[jamesdhatch]

@takitus

Some apps(fb) have even been reported to run your cell phone mic picking up what you say looking for keywords for targeted advertising purposes.

Did you see this strip this week? Funny.

[takitus]

[chrisgray1313]

Mine just says…" The Director will see you now ! "