Watch Brad Feld & Dan Shapiro print something

If the tape is vinyl based, then no. Anything containing chlorine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl ) can release chlorine gas when being cut on a laser. This is bad for you, and not great for the machine.

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Not exciting or dramatic?! Just when I thought I couldn’t be more excited. I could just pop. ahhh!

Although this tape is used in the vinyl decal business, it isn’t vinyl. It is “transfer tape” used to place vinyl in place before final application. The substrate is either paper or “plastic” (poly ethylene?) The one paper-based data sheet I found listed a “rubber-based” adhesive in addition to the paper substrate.
This would seem to be a great protective covering for laser cutting, assuming rubber doesn’t cause an problem in a laser. Comes in various levels of tack, in sheets and rolls.

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A few thoughts and questions for Dan after watching the video:

  1. Wow! Hot Damn! and other assorted superlatives!
    It’s one thing to watch a slick marketing video and have faith that the product will (eventually) actually work, but to see it perform in a real-world situation will make someone a true believer!
  2. Re: point #1, now you’ve got everyone wanting to see even more of Glowforge in action and coming up with an unlimited amount of new questions/comments/suggestions. Be prepared for us to pester you until the Glowforge shows up at the door. Then brace for a whole new round.
  3. I was glad to hear in the video that your goal was $4m (rather than the $100,000). I was concerned that you were not even in the same zip code of expectations. At least I know now you’re wildly overachieving by (only) a factor of 2 or 3.
  4. I know Glowforge will sell “pre-defined” materials and I think you mentioned Inventables as another possible source. Being first on the street to use a camera to read a material barcode for laser settings should mean you can define the standard. Will you publish the barcode process/parameters and make them openly available to any vendor? I can see this as an entire cottage industry in itself. (by the way, hoping LaserBits would be a player)
  5. Thanks again for taking the time to answer question in the forum. Probably scares the legal folks, but it is great to get an insight into the process of bringing Glowforge onto the market.

That’s what I was talking about!

@ihermit2: Yup, easy to do. I believe the software does it but the hardware support is missing - our own power supplies aren’t cleared for use outside the lab yet. (With the 3rd party power supplies we have to use, the software can’t control the laser output power, just on/off).

@septimus39: I wanted to call the video “so easy even an investor could use it”.

@padeason: Good idea!

@shollg: Yeah, we had no idea where we came in, but while we’re higher than our highest hopes, we’re not that much higher. TBD on materials, we haven’t thought through how that works. The problem is that the whole reason we’re going to be in that barcode/materials business is to make sure you have materials that are predictable, and if anyone can put the barcode on there, the quality control goes out the window. There might be a middle ground though.

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Not sure if this was stated in the movie, but is this an example of a pro or basic model?

Good to know! I’ll have to check what materials my stamping plastic is made from. I have no desire to poison myself.

What was the thickness of that walnut?

And I’d volunteer to be a guinea pig if you want more :slight_smile:

@bmhingst: Basic. We’re 100% focused on basic right now, since that’s the baseline for pro.
@htmljenn: Definitely!
@jmsuth: 1/8". Gotcha!

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Hey Dan!

Doing something like this with community members would be awesome, I think it’d definitely increase confidence : )

I build custom mechanical keyboards here in the UK in my spare time & I rent a laser cutter by the hour to cut parts, nothing too complicated but a little more functional than a coaster. I’d love to see if I could cut out and build a keyboard with a Glowforge, it’d be a great thing to show off! (and it’d save me spending £30 an hour on a laser cutter ;))

@josh got any pictures of your keyboards? Would love to see your work :wink:

@dan could make an overseas print from the EU :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey Dan,

Agreed! This was an excellent down and dirty glimpse! I’m excited to see that integration with Illustrator is simple and direct… which is one of the reasons I never dove into 3D printing. I love working in Illustrator, even teaching it at the community college in addition to my full-time day job as a graphic artist and merchandising designer. It’s an awesome tool.

I’d love to see more examples of your team executing ‘prints’, either locally or over the cloud as in this example. And yes, of course, seeing that extend into the Glowforge community would be thrilling. Naturally we’re all on pins and needles waiting to try our hand at this!

A few things I’d like to see:
• Aligning longer cuts / engravings with the Pro model
• Aligning thicker cuts by flipping the material for a second pass
• Closer glimpse of the plug-ins/ dialing in settings in the web app (those details were a bit small here)
• working with curved surfaces, such as the macbook edges

Cheers and thanks for the hard work!
-Brad

What if the user generated codes were very different? Maybe one uses a bar code and one uses QR codes?

Yes, i have a ton of this for my vinyl decal jobs. Recently learned that siser easy weed is pvc free! Would be pretty cool if my transfer tape is usable too! I’ll do some research on the brand I use from uscutter

@padeason. The product is available at laserbits.com Lang with almost anything you might want to cut or engrave. All laser safe.

http://www.laserbits.com/laser-supplies/masking-materials.html

Will the plug-in work with different versions of illustrator? Eg, CS5?
Thanks

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Here here! It would make sense to be backward compatible all the way to CS4 like an idml is.

If memory serves the plugin architecture is different, so right now it’s CC-only. I’ll put CS4/5 support in the feature request hopper.

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And of course, CS6 too.