Hands-On with the Glowforge Laser Cutter!
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- It's finally here! We have a pre-release model of the Glowforge laser cutter in our office to test, and have been running it through its paces. Adam and Norm show off its features and run through a few test cuts, including tracing one of Adam's drawings. Let us know what questions you have about the Glowforge in the comments!
Shot by Adam Isaak and edited by Norman Chan
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Adam Savage / donttrythis
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Simone Giertz / simonegiertz
Joey Fameli / joeyfameli
Adam Isaak / adamisaak
Kishore Hari / sciencequiche
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Thanks for watching! - Věda a technologie
I'm in the pre-order group, i can't WAIT to receive it this month. I've been waiting for a little more than a year.
+Tested If you really want to put that machine through it's pace, you should have Adam design and build a dollhouse. Design parameters should include working doors and windows with casements, and it should include materials other than wood (like plexiglass or glass inserts for the windows). Style isn't as important. Sure, a victorian house would definitely put the machine to the test, but everyone builds victorian doll houses. Any Craftsman house would work fine, as would a Frank Lloyd Wright style house.
Jack Linde +
OMG! Yes!!!
Jack Linde can anyone say laser cut fallingwater? Or perhaps Robie house?
Fallingwater could work.
definitely can't cut glass with this laser.
A 40watt laser also can really only cut 1/8" soft woods (baltic birch, balsa) and some plastics. In the world of lasercutters, its one of the weakest lasers you can buy that lets you cut through some materials....
Thanks for the update. I was very much interested in how fine or or thin a cutout could be, and the border coming from Adam's test seemed to be very promising.
I was an early backer of the Glowforge but ended up bailing on the project due to me coming to the conclusion that, while it seems like it would be super easy to use, it wouldn't be large enough or powerful enough for many of the projects I have in mind. I ended up purchasing an enormous 100W laser cutter from a manufacturer in China for around the same price as the Glowforge pre-order (though, what you save in price, you pay for in time spent reverse engineering the machine to make it work correctly). That said, I'm excited that they're finally getting Glowforge units rolling and I hope they become wildly successful--I also wouldn't mind playing around with their Proofgrade line of materials.
Which you do you prefer Adam? The GlowForge or the already on the market FSL Muse?
Pretty cool! I cant help but notice it offset the etch/cuts from the original sketch drawn on the board. So it isnt 1:1
that camera system is really neat, the final ornament looks absolutely incredible also!
thank you much, Tested! I'm a backer for the pro model and been on the fence with a cancellation due to lack of updates from the company. I guess Star Citizen's constant news streams have spoiled me a little. Good to see one in the wild, slower than I was expecting, but still, it's good to see that it's not vaporware. By the way, you guys should do a frequent questions about the glow forge vid. oh, by the way, the company said that the non cloud drivers will be available, but will void the warranty, not a problem if the company goes under. Thanks again
YESSSS can we please see more of this machine. I'm really interested in its full capabilities when they become available
This... Norm... The last image is just wonderful. Congrats
Do you ave control over the order of operations? Generally you'd want to do your engrave before the cut pass. [If you cut first, the part could drop and shift, resulting in the engrave not being exactly where you wanted]
finaly! I was waiting for this vid 11 months! I love glowforge (I dont have it tho)
If you want something cool and groundbreaking, take the chance. My Glowforge is totally amazing and worth the wait. Shipping to the UK was expensive, but worth it. It's very well built, well supported and a great tool for the creative mind.
Great video norm! First time I hear about this but it's amazing!
I'm a high school student who loves to tinker and build my own machines, I love mechanical engineering, I am ready for this
It doesn't look to have air assist which has been a must for my laser cutter, just curious how much impact that would have on cutting depth. Thanks for the info!
Boy I still want one!
6:35 it's a touch off of the drawn pattern. Shifted left and up from the original
Adam & his buddy Jamy are such smart geeks that they made being a geek cool. By the way, the "Glowforge 3D Laser Printer" is awesome.
Hey Norm, I expect the unit has been shipped off to the next reviewer already but if it hasn't I'd like to see Aluminium being cut and engraved.
As soon as I saw the purple design at (approximately) 11:30 I knew what you were printing although I was only half right. I knew what the left side was for but I didn't realize that the right side was for a different item. This cutter might be inexpensive for what it is but I bet the price of it is still in the range of a few thousand of dollars.
In the cloud? So when company goes bust all of a sudden machine stops working? Being there, saw that. No. Thank. You.
exactly what i thought. Or maybe they release an improved version in 5 years and stop supporting the old one then. No thank you.
That's my one real gripe about it. I love the form factor, looks like it works really well, and I'd pay a premium for such a nicely constructed package. But I can't do it if I don't know it will run for 10 years, and we don't know that Glowforge will last that long as a company.
gnzh My thoughts exactly
they allowing for stand alone if you don't want to use the cloud but prefer cloud
Oh good. That was pretty much my one worry when I saw this before.
Omg!! I want one for jewelry making!
The fact that it is cloud-based worries me. If the company goes belly-up or decides to stop supporting the device in a few years, you've got one very big, expensive paperweight.
I agree, I've 2 software programs now on the cloud and they suck. Besides being SLOW (my inter net is fine) the unscheduled update is very time consuming. 2 out 0f 5 time I use the product I have to update it and you have no choice, you have to update to use the product and sometimes the update breaks it.
I don't understand the point of the software being web based. Why not just ship the software with the laser so you can use it at home and tweak it exactly how you like?
Doug Johnson Productions cloud based is a deal breaker for many including me.
it's gcode based, It's not going to be a paperweight worst case scenario.
@Rasheed Abdul-Aziz : It's obviously you really know your stuff! Thanks for the explanation. But the comments about the company "going bust" and not being there in the future does worry me. What do you think about this scenario?
Never walk away from a laser in operation. FIRE!
This Is AWEsome
As a guy with a business revolving around my laser cutter, this makes me happy but also very nervous, haha. Pretty soon our 10 year olds are going to get a $300 laser cutter for Christmas...
This is so awesome! who wouldn't want one for Christmas! you can easily get a kid into making things with this technology or be selfish like me and want to keep it to yourself! haha! that is one gorgeous machine! Nice job Tested:)
"Without revealing it" that was funny!
All the other laser companies need to get this camera idea and software in their system if they want to be up to date. It make it so easy to work with images and objects on the bed.
Other compnaies dismiss it because they don't have this feature.
Etch something into that surface book ;)
The surface book is made out of magnesium, depending on the alloy may not be the best idea since it might burst into flames!
Awesome!
"without revealing what it is..."
meanwhile there's a clear stencil of a tiefighter and a X-wing on screen
I guess the editor didn't get that memo!
Frickin' laser beams! :)
Re: laser tube life, I've been using my Shenhui G350 50W with the original tube for a year now and it's still going strong. I don't know how much Glowforge is planning to charge for tubes, but replacing my tube looks like ~$250 so really it's on the order of replacing toner on a couple laser printers. Seems reasonable to me.
Those are pretty good machines for the money and are fine for production work. You can also fit a more powerful tube which will be near impossible in the GF.
I'm quite happy with mine. My only regret was buying one with an irregular rotary attachment device instead of a motorized z-bed.
What if you don't have an internet connection? Is it effectively a paperweight without the internet? What happens when glowforge goes out of business, or the "cloud" service fails or is taken offline? Is your unit now a useless brick? Will there be any support for local system software support? This is a huge futureproofing issue.
If they didn't add a local system I'd be extremely surprised!
Just saying, not everyone is like Apple in removing old things because something new is available!
It would be using google cloud so that will not go out of business. The company glow forge has about $30mill of backers on these device
draggonhedd it's the same case for a lot of products now, it's just where we are heading
How is the ventilation set up? When setting it up in your home, what do you connect it to? Do you just route the pipe to a window?
Is it as loud as a vacuum? Or does it just sound like one?
Since it has a wide angle camera, wouldn't the scanned image be distorted? Where accuracy is important, such as doing marquetry or inlays, I am wondering if this camera will cause inaccuracy which cause the pieces not to fit properly. This is the case where you would want to use Adobe Illustrator vs. the browser base software. Question, if you just use Adobe Illustrator, can you bypass the internet requirement and print (send the artwork) directly to the laser, similar to sending a print job to a printer?
:O saw that mandala on Adam's macbook in Still Untitled! It all makes sence now
Looks really cool, I desperately wanted one during the pre-orders a year ago but just couldn't afford it. There were a few things I noted, the first being that originally I recall it being mentioned that the detail camera in the cutting head would be used for scanning drawings put into the glowforge, but it appeared that this was not the case with this model. Will this be in software shipped on the final version, or a future update? Or has the plan been scrapped? Also I was surprised that the laser cut the vector first before etching the raster. Is this intentional? If the material were to slip after the first cut the raster would then be off position. Is the order of operations changeable, or is there some other reason for it being done this way around?
You could use this to make plates for an offset printer.With this in your shop copying multiple bills with different serial numbers is not as COST prohibitive.Considering the anti-counterfeiting measures in the larger denominations makes one and five dollar bills more attractive to the cautious (and frugal) felon.
8:51 Did he say 40 minutes? That's a long time for such a small piece. I have only used a 60w epilog laser, but I didn't think 40w would be that much slower.
1:50
"Phased Plasma Rifle in the 40 watt range."
You had to change the outside cut line off camera!
Thanks for the video! Do you think this would cut through 1" wood?
so are we gonna have "cut the mystery object" every Friday now?
Yes please! :)
5:20 That etching process is as slow as molasses in winter.
'cloud processing' is a huge turnoff, this usually leads to subscriptions and other reoccurring intangible charges.
Nice!
I'm experienced with both the Epilog laser (120w) and my personal Full Spectrum laser (90w). Both laser machines do not require CAD files, although they both will accept them. I use Corel Draw on both machines and they both recognize the files automatically. As for the Glowforge being able to cut through 1/2" material with a 40w laser tube, I would have to see it to believe it. All in all, however, the Glowforge is a cool entry level laser for those who like to play around with a laser cutter.
I also have the Full Spectrum and I've cut through 3/4" pine, 1/2" cherry and alder. It just takes a lot of passes and you have to monitor the temperature of the wood. After so many passes the wood will hold the heat and create the possibility of ignition. Before that happens I just let it cool down for awhile and then continue the cut. Now if Golwforge is claiming to cut through 1/2" with one pass, I'd have to say BS on that one!
i wanted one so bad. but that waiting period and 5000 dollars man. got a full spectrum and even though weve had some problems with the psu the customer service was great
The Tie fighter looks cool in natural wood finish, but I'd like you to paint one in the right Star Wars colors. And I want to see the X wing too.
Sweet those bow ships are cool I like...
Will it etch on glass or highly reflective materials?
I'm kinda hoping there'll be an SDK available to make drivers accessible directly from Illustrator.
Seems backwards to cut and then engrave because the workpiece you're about to engrave will have moved.
You can order in the software to engrave before you cut. That's pretty much the standard procedure. (You can choose the production order of all elements in your design.)
if you look close it did move
I wonder, since the laser tube is attached to the stepper motors, if that's what's causing the rastering to be so slow? Like most hobbyist laser machines, my tube is stationary. I've had material jams before, so I'm curious what happens when you jam that moving laser tube against something?
This feels weird. I want the Glowforge to be good. I am interested in tested's opinion of it. But I'm not convinced that there is an opinion here. This feels a little like a commercial to me. I'm not saying it definitively is but knowing they are getting paid by Glowforge definitely doesn't rule it out.
Yeah, feels like sponsored content. I pre-ordered the Glowforge Pro and am soooo tempted to get a refund with all the delays and further research.
Oddly expensive considering you can buy 40w laser cutters for $280 and 100w for $2k. External appearance isn’t worth the added expense and any decent controller can be upgraded into a preexisitng $300 laser if one wanted to optimize it.
Bitter sweet; apparently shipment is delayed again. We were supposed to receive the unit in December (now). Now in December they say there is another delay...between March and July 2017. Man...I am fighting to keep that thing. How am I supposed to justify another delay :(
You should have changed cut order so that it cut last. Also, what are the fume extraction options?
What key or combination of keys did you push to make the cut path?
I want one!
I want to see your comparison of the Gowforge vs a Universal laser or Epilog system.
Have you done a follow up video yet Tested? It's been 4 months!
You ABSOLUTLY need to make things in SVG.
without revealing what it is....we are all nerds here yo, we say that was a Tie fighter in less then a second
11:40 where did Jeremy get that Death Star computer t-shirt? I want it sooo bad
So if the interface is web based and your internet goes down or even the company goes out of business, it becomes useless?
Welcome to the cloud age - where your tools don't belong to you and you need an internet connection just to read a QR code sticker from a sheet of plywood.
Mooferoo Yep, it's called planned obsolescence
This was my main concern when I bought the Cricut pen and die cutting machine (It's browser based only). I hedged my bets and got it anyway. I figured someone will have reverse engineered the communication protocol with the machine to work with other apps long before Cricut goes out of business, should that ever happen.
they allowing for a stand alone according to their kickstarter
+Thyshallsmite As this post indicates, they had better...
Were getting one of these at my school
i have the FSL muse. i have to say the glowforge looks better and looks better built. but i think FSL planed it to be like that. having the laser for some time i realized that there will come a time you have to fix your laser. change tube, belts etc. FSL muse was designed for you to be able to fix it yourself. this does not look like something you can fix yourself and may require you to send it back if something goes wrong.
This I need to have! So exciting with so many things to be made.UPDATE: Oh, my, reading reviews on Amazon and not good! Especially that you have to buy all the cutting materials from THEM! Plus cloud-based software. Well, I guess I will have to look elsewhere.
I like how the guy who works for them is so surprised and seemingly clueless about some of the most basic features of the only product they sell
can the laser be removed and used for evil purposes? asking for a friend.
I'd like to know if there is a bracket included to mount it to a shark.
No it won't fit on sharks. it will fit on sea bass tho, if they're horribly mutated.
Try a pigeon instead, no one will see it coming and the laser doesn't like saltwater anyway.
Dorian Gray are they ill tempered?
The laser can be removed and mounted and yes, possibly on a pigeon. However it's that 20lb power supply and long cord that is the problem...
The two MAJOR problems are 1) You need to be online to use it. Therefore it will stop working as soon as they stop building new ones. and 2) They still have not shipped them out yet. People who ordered them in October 2015 are being told they will get them mid 2017. If you really want a laser cutter get either a China Laser or a Full Spectrum Laser. Much more for your money and none of these problems.
There seems to be a difference between the actual design, and the laser path used to cut or engrave. The two don't match. The laser path looks shifted a bit. Is this something that will be resolved?
I finally figured it out.. Norm moves like a Marionette! I can't see the wires yet, but I swear they are there.
Nice, which model did you test, Pro or Basic?
You guys should do a indoor diy ventilation system
Do you have a link to the vector file for the "ornament set based on a popular franchise?"
They have one of those at my high school
Adam is the consultant but it seems like Norm knows a lot more about it
First turn off is that it’s cloud based meaning if the company is sold or folds you now have a $1200-$5000 paperweight
03:37 what's up with that Charlie Brown music? XD
This laser mostly works on the cloud. What do you do if you don't have internet availiable. My internet access is spotty at best. Is there software I can install on my computer to run this thing? I have CAD software.
Still waiting on mine
Can this ENGRAVE metal? I am looking for an engraver for keys... trays of keys, up to 30 at a time to cut my time on building master key systems. Engraved images must be cut deep, so image does not wear off. Etching is not good enough.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to etch an area or shape which is all joined up (like one of the little triangles), then move to the next shape? It seems to have a lot of unnecessary movement by moving all the way across each line of "print", but only burning a few dots at a time like an inkjet printer. Take out most of the "blank" moves and that 40mins is probably more like 8-10mins, maybe less?
Probalaby, but you would have to design a slicer like they have for 3d printers, dunno how much work that would be and the way its setup now you can just use a printerdriver
arhg! those hoodie strings
I have to agree with many of the comments below. One presumes Glowforge will respond to customer feedback and work out the kinks... but this is a competitive industry. I like the cut & trace feature, being able to use other than vector files etc... but other cutters have had (for example) jpeg & bmp to vector file conversion software for some time. This considered, the trace function isn't all that impressive-- especially since the end result was visibly offline from the original drawing.
The comment about cutting before etching is also true: etch, THEN cut rather than as shown in the video. Then add the final blow to the process: 40 to 45 minutes to etch and cut one single piece? That has to be the slowest laser etcher on the planet. They weren't etching stainless steel there; they were etching 1/8" wood. I would consider 3 minutes excessive, 60 seconds more reasonable. Can you imagine trying to manufacture a logo with this machine at 45 minutes a pop? There are $500 "hobby lasers" that do a better job than seen here.
Then the final blow: cloud-based software. I currently have a piece of software that is useless because the registration system tries to access an online company that's no longer online. So although I have a valid registration code, the software is trash. Those kinds of programs-- and the whole idea of cloud-based software-- make purchasing this machine a no-brainer no-buy for me. Granted this video was (at this time) made 2 years ago, pre-production. Maybe the company has upgraded its system by now. If so, maybe they need to have this video upgraded as well. As it stands, it's a major "DO NOT BUY ME!" flashing red light.
WANT!!
When will they release this?!
Does it come with the Black glasses. I notice they kept falling off your head
This is exactly what we are looking for, We could use 3 maybe 4 in our production model shop. I will tell you why we will not buy this for our company. This unit is not stand alone. We have poor to spotty internet service in our shop and the industrial park is not on the top list by the internet provider for upgraded. 2nd we do not feel comfortable sending our digital property out on the web to a cloud computer to be rendered and returned back to us. Granted it is not TOP SECRET or SECRET digital models, but still this is our Digital Property and it should not be out on an uncontrolled server in the cloud.
You should look at a Voccell DLS then. I have one (they are close by to my business) and its great and easily 10-15 times faster than the Glowforge for engraving so you would only need 1 instead of 3 or 4. It doesn't require an internet connection and it can run all day without overheating. I had a Glowforge preorder until the delays and the misplaced hype machine; I cancelled and haven't looked back. This video just reaffirms why I jumped ship.
Thanks, I will check it out. Speed is very important to use. Running 8 hours a day it looks as if the Glow forge will cut about 4 to 6 kits a day. I would like to get 15 to 20 kits cut a day. Thanks.
I use an Epilog 7-12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Find a used Zing or Mini if you don't need a really big bed and you'll probably be just fine.
I have the same concerns as you about digital property, which is why I bought my own NAS. It has cloud functionality so I can work on designs when I'm on the road, but everything is stored locally in my shop. No way I would use a cloud based app for actually sending files to the laser.
This is not a machine suitable for production work. It's a hobbyist product. I have a laser with twice the cutting area and twice the cutting power and it didn't cost me more than the Glowforge. It will run 10 hours a day, day after day.
It is way over priced for the averagescrap booker or someone doing crafts. You would think at the price it would be good for real production work.
I did a drawing this monday and it missed a line, the camera isnt quite perfect yet
Does it cut and engraves on clear acrylic?
Wait... didn't we see Adam using the glowforge A YEAR AGO?
The glowforge looks nice, but its comparatively high price tag, and limitations (such as requiring you to be online, only 40W laser, slow cutting speed, etc) make it less desirable. The unit is basically a 2 axis CNC with a laser and focuser, not terribly different than a vinyl cutter or plotter (or ink jet printer, for that matter). As widespread as the DIY 3D Printer movement has grown, I am surprised a similar movement has not taken off for DIY laser cutters.
The only thing unique about this product is its camera system, and related software, which could be its 'killer app' as I almost preordered one last year. There are laser cutters on the market that are slightly more expensive that have existed for quite a number of years on this scale, e.g., cuts thin metals, as well as more powerful lasers.
Was this the glow forge basic?
Wow 😲