Funny Glowforge genesis story: I was going back and forth with Mark, our CTO, between closed-loop (servos, which I was advocating) and open-loop (steppers). He made a better case for steppers. Finally I said, “Well hell, if you want to go open loop, you don’t even need local control at all. Just put the damn motion controller in the server.” I didn’t actually realize what I’d suggested until Mark stared at me like I was from Mars for a while and it dawned on both of us just how powerful that could be.
I miss getting to work on the actual design… now I have to be all CEO-y. Catching up with you all is one of the highlights of my day. : )