Having now seen the Glowforge in person I was quite impressed with the ease of use from the perspective of a novice maker. I watched quite a number of the samples being produced (including my own) and the process went exceptionally quick and all of them looked good to me.
Based on the features shown at the Faire, the only question I thought of after I left was whether the main camera could be zoomed in on the material to allow for better alignment of the scanned images (or imported) on the material. See the below photo.
I noticed on a few of the drawings that there seemed to be a little struggle getting them lined up on top of each other and centered given their small size on the screen. I’m not sure if this functionality exists or could be added later, but I believe it would be helpful for more novice users such as myself particularly when dealing with smaller materials and images. If there’s another way to address this concern also please educate me! I’m more speaking to what it seems to me would be a large alignment struggle with smaller materials and / or placing multiple smaller items close to each other with the interface.
I believe this is actually my first post on the forum but I’ve read almost every topic since I purchased back in October. This is my first venture into the field and I’ve been learning from everyone. Hopefully I’ll have more to contribute once I have one and I’m able to play with it.
P.S. Thank you Glowforge for the free tickets, it gave me a nice excuse to fly up and see Seattle for the first time! I’m posting from the airport on the way back to Vegas.
I think what you are talking about was demonstrated by @dan in the UI video posted awhile back, at around the 5:20 mark. He zooms in on the eye. Is that what you meant?
Good comment. I watched that demo a number of times and the fact that he zoomed in went right past me. Others have noted that the tiny eye didn’t cut exactly where shown as placed. I believe I heard that optical adjustments were in process. Hopefully the alignment issue is just with the zoom feature. While we need zoom to place small items, it would be great if the “non zoomed” alignment is already calibrated well.
Me too! I watched the video a number of times and didn’t put together what was happening with the zoom. As far as non-zoomed alignment, it seemed spot on from the runs I saw yesterday.
@youcbs welcome! It’s great to hear from you, and I’m so glad you could make it out - and delighted we could provide the tickets.
We do indeed have zoom, and have for a while, but just last week @jonathanpark added a ton of stuff that made it more useful: higher resolution images, higher zoom factors, keyboard shortcuts for pan and zoom, and more.
Once you get a solid setup for the filter any chance you could give us a box set of dimensions so I can take my tape measure and validate my planned locations has enough clearance to ventilation + bend in hose between glowforge and filter. Just a nice overall HxWxD required. I’m pretty sure too snug wont’ fit the bend in the hose to the filter, or allow enough airflow.
