So decided to capture a quick video of the tube in action at the power-supply end. I hadn’t noticed the light-show going on under the case (sorry my top is a bit dusty/grungy due to a recent big engrave) but the whole plasma-lamp thing going on in there (which I am hoping is normal) is kind of hypnotizing to watch…
35 Likes
Reminds me of my plasma globe
5 Likes
Yes, I had noticed that on this pre-release. You have to be pretty curious to get your head at an angle to see it. Assume it’s normal.
9 Likes
oh yeah, that’s the good stuff
5 Likes
Yep, somebody was hugging their 
9 Likes
You mean that’s not a natural thing? 
7 Likes
Maybe, after all, we’re well-known “tree huggers” here in Boulder.
5 Likes
Nothing wrong with hugging a tree…as long as you remember to pull all of the twigs out of your hair before anyone else sees you!
4 Likes
Now I want to hug a glowforge 
Is that weird?
3 Likes
glowhuggers? 
4 Likes
Nice video. Love the colors.
When I first got it, I would watch the whole print and stick my nose to the glass to try and get every angle. When I got the GoPro and stuck it in the bed, that was really cool to see some of the pew pew. The pink plasma is very pleasant. I also was wondering about the bubbles in the tube when I first got it. They moved on. There are still parts that I haven’t investigated too much inside the bed behind the side rails because it is just to hard to get my head in there. @henryhbk, I’m sure some type of endoscope would come in handy to snake in behind things and see what is there. Of course not really possible with the laser in action, that I can see.
Seeing the end flashing the purple is cool. Optics are the most amazing thing. I remember reading about the perfect smoothness of a big telescope reflector mirror. If it were the size of the united states the tallest thing on the surface would be 500 feet tall or something like that.
I’ve been following a good machinist YouTube and he has been making surface place polishers and using an optical gauge to check flatness within a wavelength of light.
This is what draws me so much about the laser is that it does raise these wonderful questions about precision.
5 Likes
You seem mildly concerned in addition to being enraptured. What light effect are you watching that has you wondering if it is normal precisely?
There is a tube of light, which is the collimation of the laser itself. Then there are the swirly/swoopy flashes along the end.
Those are reflections, and are swooping and swirling as the gantry moves and your viewing angle shifts (95% certain). Set up a cut that is perfectly aligned in the X direction so that the laser is firing but the gantry is not moving (I guess the most reliable would be to engrave a REALLY long rectangle). While the head moves and the gantry stays still, you should see no change in that end-of-tube light.
2 Likes
Oh it is definitely swirly on x-axis only cuts. And when I engraved @Joe’s stamp it was lighting up like a little lightning storm in there… And that was all back and forth…
2 Likes
Intriguing… there is still water flow which could cause for some shift in refraction index… but if any that would be quite minor. So now I am also left to ponder what can be the cause.
Shouldn’t it be “pyew, pyew”? Two syllables kind of like Star Trek phaser noise? Pew pew is smelly and that’s not generally the case with appropriate venting.
1 Like
I’d go with ForgeHuggers for us in Colorado. 
3 Likes
But pew pew seems to be the current way of describing what a laser does, even though is silent.
‘oo’ and ‘ew’ have different pronunciations.
I don’t follow. The ‘oo’ in moon seems to be the same sound as the ‘ew’ in new.
But the “ew” in ewe is different. I once spent two full voice lessons of two hours each working on the oo (moon) sound and the “ew” sound as in review which the diphthong. It was then that I understood finally tong position and mount shape.
New rhymes with poo but pew rhymes with you.
Funny thing we say peeyoo for a stench but write it as PU.
Comes from Latin words for smell same as putrescence. Would be cool to check out Indo-European word for stench and see if it correlates with a physical reaction to smell
By the way, with the internet regionalism gain traction all over. I have noted that British English word are finding more and more traction here. Poo to me seems associate very much with British writing and speaking. I don’t recall hearing it much before. Now it seems more commonly used. But this is a whole nether squirrel.
8 Likes