Weekly Highlights for the Week ending April 8th, 2017

[Jules]

Last Week: Highlights for the Week Ending April 1st, 2017

Staff Comments

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April Status Update

April 2017 update

Happy April! Our team is working like mad towards shipping you your Glowforge, and we’re making amazing progress. Our team continues to grow - you can see us all here, and join us here. We’re working hard towards our shipping schedule, and making some huge progress. For this update, I went through my phone and grabbed a dozen or so pictures. Pardon the poor image quality of all the photos I’ve included. Having learned my lesson after the first three Pro units from the factory were torn apar…

Hello Glowforge - Episode 1

NEW video: Hello Glowforge Episode 1

[Custom Laser Cut Tokens with Trace - Glowforge 3D Laser Printer] Got ideas for the next episode? I want to hear em below!

Custom Laser Cut Tokens with Trace - Glowforge 3D Laser Printer

What about keeping a list of successful print settings?

The Hopeful Makings of a Scroll Saw, on a Glowforge

That is in the hopper (we’ve talked about it a few times - super handy feature).

Is there a range of hours that defines “heavy use” for the machine?

Discussion of March '17 update

No, it’s just a rough way to describe the difference between, for example, a pro user who might be running the machine most of the day in a workshop, versus a home user who mostly uses it on nights and weekends.

Is there a problem using a different power cord for the machine? (It causes a problem with cutters.)

It's April 1 Somewhere

These are standard IEC power cords, not voltage adapters, so the cutter problem shouldn’t be an issue.

Does the filter require space behind it for breathing room?

A new look on dimensions

Re: air, you’ll want some clearance in the back and on the right for “breathing room” (I don’t have exact numbers for you unfortunately). For the passthrough, the front and back are slotted with a flexible curtain, so it does not protrude at all.

How does the filter connect to the Glowforge?

A new look on dimensions

It’s actually a U-bend that connects them in the back (the aforementioned macaroni comment). The filter intake is directly below the Glowforge exhaust.

What kind of Customer Support is Glowforge going to offer?

https://community.glowforge.com/t/support-launch/6810/32?u=jules

Why do we have a place to enter the material thickness for focus in the machine if the machine is auto-focusing?

God Bless America! - UPDATED with Wood Base

If the focus height is left at the default, it uses autofocus instead. If you change it, it doesn’t use the autofocus. (@Tony, correct me if I’m wrong).

Is the Proofgrade Store open yet?

Discussion of the April '17 update

Only for beta and prerelease customers so far, I’m afraid. We’ll let you know when you can use it!

Chadmart1076 wants a pony. (so does jules)

Discussion of the April '17 update

Unfortunately it’s missing as of this morning - I’m guessing it fell down & the cleaning folks took it. Are you wondering about the alignment, or the quality of cutting on paper, or something else? No ETA yet. We have a bunch of testing setups - many of them at 3rd party contractors who do specialized tests on our behalf, so unfortunately not always ours to share. Hey @Tony, @chadmart1076 wants a pony.

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Beta and PreRelease

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Shot Glass Carrier

Shot glass carrier

Due to more of my wife’s work shenanigans I bought her six similar shot glasses at the thrift store. In a burst of inspiration I made a custom carrier for them. Beginning to end this project took about 1/2 an hour and I am quite happy with it. The blue tape denotes the 1.5 oz fill mark. I am going to replace the bolts with something prettier later. [image]

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Johann es Ironman (e-NABLE build)

Made Better With a Glowforge

It’s been a crazy weekend. As much as I wanted to focus on exploring the Glowforge’s capabilities, I was also committed to finishing an e-NABLE build, an Ironman-themed device for a young man in Mexico. Then the thought popped into my head — How can I use the Glowforge to make this better? 5 minutes of laser time later… [image] The artwork was a jpeg from the interwebs [image] The soft focus was caused by me taking the image with one hand while manipulating the hand to grip the plaque wi…

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More Fun Things

Made a few more little things

Used the GF’s design of the picture frame with living hinge to make this customized one (ummm, I had to blur out the logo of the theme party…sshhh) [image] I tink I forgot to remove some of the backing, lol. Anyway, it was fun & easy to make, but the back piece’s engraving (the big dark patch on the pic) took a while, since it basically has to cut a pretty large area with just a pin needle width laser, so it takes time to cover the whole area. If you are making a lot of these, you might be…

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Take Note

Take note

I’ve been wanting to do some more with leather and decided I’d make a nice pencil holder for the notebook I embellished. I started by taking a scrap of paper and folding it and stapling it together around some pencils to roughly estimate the design I was thinking of. Then I took the staples out of it and flattened it out again to measure the spacing between my “staple seams”. I cleaned it up a bit in Illustrator and ended up with this design that is basically a tri-fold of 4"x4" squares with …

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Couple Projects

Pre Release: A couple little projects

Hey folks, me again. I’ve been trying to stay away from the computer (and the GF) today because I did too much mousing the last few days and my hand/arm has gone all carpal-tunnelly. Not a big deal, it’s already better, just need to take it easy. I did do a couple projects yesterday and they are nothing special but folks seem to want to see output so I’ll show them anyway. Throw a tomato my way if you are getting tired of them! First was a practical solution for my husband: a set of templa…

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Lighting the Way

Pre-Release | Lighting the Way

All the electronics are custom. The controller is a sparkcore running a sketch that can talk to SmartThings. (Same everything is in the house number project) In fact the two are sync’d to each other. When the house number triggers (runs a color pattern and plays a song or a sound effect) the path lighting echos the same colors/pattern. All of that is inside the first path light with 5V running to it. Everything is wireless. [image]

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Ichigo and Co

Pre-Release | Ichigo & Co

Supplies: Glass from a dollar store picture frame & Proofgrade 1/8" Cherry Ply - Op Time: 27mins Glass. [image] [image] [image] Cherry. [image] [image]

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Memorial and Spinner (Proofgrade Acrylic)

1/4" Proofgrade Clear Acrylic: Memorial and Spinner

I got that big haul of 1/4" Chemcast acrylic (thanks @cynd11) and knew I’d work on a spinner with it. And I also had a four foot by one foot piece of .43" acrylic to use. Then I found my 1/4" Proofgrade acrylic sheet. There were some initial problems with reading that Proofgrade’s QR code (support notified), but when I was ready to come back to it, it registered and performed flawlessly. Here are pics of the two end projects: [image] This is a memorial to a dog that made the final journey. O…

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Tic Tac Toe(Catalog Design)

Beta Design Catalog Project - Tick-Tack-Toe

Here it is! Another Beta Design Catalog project! And wouldn’t you know it… it’s another game! There isn’t much room for customizing this one, so I just printed it as-is and it came out great! This is 1/8" cherry hardwood. I could flip the tile over and engrave the lid I suppose… but I didn’t really think about it. Now that I do think about it, that would make a cool kid’s party favor. Have the boards pre-cut (engraving the spaces takes a fair amount of time), and then have each kid draw a pict…

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Just a Quick One

Pre-Release: Just a Quick One

We were at Ace Hardware last night and I scored some cedar grilling skewers, which I thought would be a lot of fun for tags and such. [image] I still can’t spend a lot of time on the computer on account of my hand, but I just had to try it. It took 3 tries to get the engrave settings to not cut all the way through (these skewers are .1" thick and .35" high), and I could still increase the speed a bit to make the engrave shallower. I think it looks nice in the Papyrus font, don’t you? …

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Trace Test on Cardstock

Prerelease Trace Test on Cardstock

Continuing the discussion from No Foolin': and also this excellent topic: We have had many discussions about the accuracy of this function. Here is an example of the different steps. I also show the use of masking on a paper product, .012" cardstock (thanks again @cynd11!). I also show why I do not use this function much as you can see from the hand drawn cat/pig that is the subject. [image] Cat/pig drawn directly on Laserbits masking with a fine point Sharpie. The masking is applied on bo…

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Extruded vs Cast Acrylic Engraves

Local Dealers rock

Here are the two engraves. I already had one in cast, so I just did one in extruded as well. Probably not the best image to use for an example, but you can hopefully see which is of better quality. [image] [image]

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New Pre-Releaser! (Congrats @jamesdhatch !)

1/4" Proofgrade Clear Acrylic: Memorial and Spinner

Left is using the PG auto settings, right is using the manual override @Rita provided. [image] This is after removing the masking. The manual settings are fine. Although you can see the pinpricks where the scoring corners are. That’s also being tweaked. [image] Here’s what the masking looked like. Top is PG auto settings and bottom is the manual override version. [image]

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And another New Pre-Releaser! (Congrats @henryhbk !)

Delivering babies

So for those of you who have kids, you know that the moment of birth is a life altering moment for you. As a doctor you get to participate in a moment in people’s lives that is truly incredible. Delivering a baby is truly the highlight of your day, although the waiting can make it seem like a marathon by the time it happens. People have waited and waited and with incredible anticipation, and the day finally comes. There is of course some agony mixed in with the waiting, but when the moment of d…

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Test for Slicer for Fusion 360

Slicer for F360 - Tested on a GF

There have been quite a few discussions about Autodesk’s Slicer for F360, so I thought I would run a little experiment. I loaded one of their sample shapes, reduced the number of cuts and the size so that it would fit on a single sheet of cardboard, and told it how thick the material was (0.060"). It popped out a PDF that loaded fine in the GFUI. 3 minutes and 14 seconds later… [image][image] So, it works… slicer test plan.pdf (77.8 KB)

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Passover Name Cards - Second Project

Second project of the day

So last year if you recall I did this insanity for our Passover dinner for the name cards. It was beyond exhausting as I had just gotten my printer working that week, and cranking this stuff through, and hadn’t really mastered the art of merging meshes etc, So this year, since I have been on nights, and frantically cranking out abscess simulators (I will post in my ongoing medical molding thread when they are ready) on both my printers which are humming 24x7 (going through 4kg/wk of PETg) I h…

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Third Project - Dog Tags

A little night cap - testing anodized aluminum engrave

I so need to go to sleep, but anyway, one last thing for the evening… Unlike @karaelena I decided my new iPad pro would not be first test, but with a wife who is a vet, figured hey, let’s try dog tags. 20 seconds in AI, export as a 600dpi PNG. Placed a dog bone on the honeycomb and used the ruler to square it up (that’s going to be a challenge, without some sort of grid thing like I have on my X-Carve and FR4 CNCs) and I suppose in the future I will make a jig… Anyway, here is a 600 dpi engrav…

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Garden Stakes (Proofgrade Acrylic)

Pre-Release | Garden Stakes

Supplies: Proofgrade 1/8" frosted acrylic - Op time: 18 mins My wife made these this past weekend. [image] [image] [image] [image]

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God Bless America

God Bless America! - UPDATED with Wood Base

My two young boys have been obsessed lately with the American Revolution, and so I decided to go with that theme for my next draft project; an engraved acrylic sign. A HUGE thank you those of you who have posted this kind of project in the past; @smcgathyfay @marmak3261 armak3261 (apologies if I have missed anyone) like this: ProofGrade Projects and Pre-Release Glowforge mini acrylic LED sign - #18 by jamesdhatch Please keep in mind that this was just a ROUGH test run, so it’s o…

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And another new Pre-Releaser! (Congrats @Xabbess !)

What amazing fun!

Received a pre-release Glowforge yesterday, and with the help of my kind son-in-law, was able to get it up and running quickly. At first, we had a connection issue, but that wasn’t on Glowforge, that was on me. We started out mainly doing traces, so that the two youngest grandsons could go home with a ‘souvenir’. They also made one each for two older brothers that weren’t able to be there. I first made my ruler, using the template provided by Glowforge. The ruler is becoming more and more the sy…

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Forno Di David

https://community.glowforge.com/t/a-faceplate-for-the-forno-prerelease/6907?u=jules

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Knife Block - Proofgrade Veneer Inlay

https://community.glowforge.com/t/knife-block-inlay/6910?u=jules

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Deep Engrave Torture Test

https://community.glowforge.com/t/last-one-for-night-unintentional-torture-test-of-variable-focus/6913?u=jules

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Parametric Box - Free Laser Design

https://community.glowforge.com/t/parametric-box-from-free-laser-design/6934?u=jules

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Pi Enclosure
https://community.glowforge.com/t/glowforge-wifi-pi-enclosure/6953?u=jules

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Dispatches from the Front

https://community.glowforge.com/t/dispatches-from-the-front-pre-release-report/6954?u=jules

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Scan and Trace Functions on the Glowforge

https://community.glowforge.com/t/prerelease-trace-test-on-cardstock/6870/51?u=jules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgWaZ0dkfc

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Forum

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Metal Inlay

https://community.glowforge.com/t/wire-inlay-from-instructables/6808?u=jules

Strand Beest Pattern - Free Designs

https://community.glowforge.com/t/free-laser-design-laser-friendly-strand-beest/6816?u=jules

Laser Engraved Projects

https://community.glowforge.com/t/laser-engraved-projects/6831?u=jules

Parametric Box with Finger Joints - Fusion 360 File

https://community.glowforge.com/t/parametric-box-with-finger-joints-fusion-360-file/6839?u=jules

Parametric Flex Boxes in OpenSCAD - Free Designs

https://community.glowforge.com/t/parametric-2-part-flex-boxes/6851?u=jules

Journal Cover - Free Laser Design

https://community.glowforge.com/t/free-laser-design-journal-cover/6858?u=jules

Parametric Globe Ball Stand

https://community.glowforge.com/t/parametric-globe-ball-stand-fusion-360/6952?u=jules

SVGs to Share

https://community.glowforge.com/t/ignore/6941?u=jules

[hansepe]

Another excellent compilation @Jules - thank you very much.

[davidgal2]

You are getting really good at this. Thank you for all of your hard work.

[mheiselt]

As always, thanks so much for putting these together @Jules. The forum is getting crazy (mostly in a good way), so this is nice.

[Tom_A]

Thanks again! You always manage to include something that I missed!

[PlGHEADED]

Thanks for all your effort @Jules !! (And for putting up with some of us…)

[Jules]

Fair is fair…you have to put up with me, and that’s likely much worse…