I’ve tried it. It won’t run with the door down. It’ll also send ALL of the smoke and debris out the front instead of the exhaust. You might be able to trick it (magnets!), but I didn’t really care to test it too much since I ordered the pro. (And I didn’t wanna be smoked out haha)
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Ops, wrong take away, IT WON’T DO ANY GOOD WITHOUT THE PRO SOFTWARE. we now return to our inside voice. 
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Yeah, I’ll just trick that door full open and roll the whole machine out to the driveway… technically that’s ventilated, right? Good enough for an audience of my size!
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Well, without pro software, you may not be able to have a giant job, but you can definitely imprint one (or many) little jobs all over your super long piece of material (manually lining them up against each other if needed… no pro software needed)…
And… tons of use cases of putting a little logo on a giant piece of material which sticks out of the machine… (headstock of a guitar neck, for example). Which shouldn’t need pro software…
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At least in MA I’m pretty sure that would be illegal as an unshielded class IV laser?
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I think Dan may have mentioned that in the past. Along with the caveat that he would not suggest that such a thing would be safe. In fact he was the one to point out that magnets could be used. It was a digression from his normal reticence over FNL type topics.
I don’t think it’s illegal. If you’re a commercial enterprise then it would be a problem with OSHA unless people in the vicinity were appropriately protected (glasses, etc). But an individual can do whatever they want with a Class 4 laser as long as they don’t hurt someone. If you’re a manufacture of lasers you need to make sure certain warnings & labels are included on the machine along with FDA certification.
Not exactly. The Pro software provides for auto-registration of the piece as it moves through the machine. If you want to manually align or have designs that won’t need registration relative to the part you’ve slid forward, you’re good. No Pro software needed.
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True
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Also true, limited use case but yeah.
So in MA class IV have to be registered, and it looks like some of the regs apply with outdoor use specifically; and one thing is not producing a public hazard (some kid or dog walks through your yard at that moment?). The regs I looks like referred to some other document (which of course is a corrupt RTF - thanks MA) but there also seemed to be a hint of not doing it outdoors near an airport, and some other things. My god, there are regs dealing with the Apple Color laserwriter 12/600, and why is this website simply a collection of really old RTF files?!!?
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The government sure protects you in MA.
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And apparently from reading documents in my browser!
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Good thing you live up there. Down here in CT I might be killed by rogue laser beams coming from my Apple Laserwriter 
That’s the trouble with governments - plenty of time to make dumb rules about things they don’t understand but no time to go back and clean up the mess after it’s apparent the laws, rules or regs were misguided or unnecessary.
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No, the difference in price between basic & pro today ($3,000) is less than the price for early preorder customers to upgrade ($2,250), so you’re saving both on the original purchase and on the amount of the upgrade.
This is correct.
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I for one applaud the cowboy-style maker spirit of this thread, think you definitely should not cut holes in your Glowforge (at least until it’s out of warranty or the GF2 is a thing), and insist you video tape it if you do because I wanna see!
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Ahh, should have checked my numbers before talking. Story of my life
I think it’s more that they don’t want to wast money getting rid of regs that have no application so there is no need to get rid of them (like the buggy whip regulations, like who cares…). Or they more likely don’t have a contractor to maintain the website… The DPH budget is super low in MA.
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I doubt cutting a hole in your Glowforge would be sufficient to void your whole warranty. This statement is provided without warranty of any kind. ;p
I’m no lawyer, but it’s my understanding that companies can’t void whole warranties just because one aspect of a warranted product has been modified or damaged. For example, cutting your right shoe in half isn’t sufficient cause to void the warranty on the left one.
I’m sure there’s tons of stuff on the internet about this. Here’s an article that doesn’t really say what I said, but is still worth a look…
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I can’t wait until the “mods” forum topic is started. 
I think you’re right about the warranty stuff. Just because you removed a rubber foot, drilled a hole, if those are unrelated to what actually did fail, then I think you’re ok. So if cutting the hole screws up the ventilation design and a component overheats, then that’s on us for modding the thing. If component overheating isn’t affected by the hole, then you’re probably good. No warranty in these ideas I’m spewing either
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I suspect that a company can reject a warranty repair for any real or imagined modification no matter the bearing that mod may have had on what failed. You would then have the right sue them over it. You’ll probably want better lawyer(s) than they have.
Presumably GF will prove to have a more enlightened view of warranty repairs.
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I wouldn’t warranty something that had a hole cut in it. Or even if you popped the case without permission. But only because it costs money to determine whether your actions caused the warranty problem. Let’s face it, 90% of the folks will lie and say they were very careful and nothing they did could have possibly caused an issue. So the company agrees to pay shipping both ways,and repair costs.
They open up the machine and find a piece of case plastic wedged somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be. Or a screw dropped onto a piece of electronics. People, including me, are often idiots.
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