This looks like a decent laser but I thought I'd post a few thoughts about this package which might give a potential buyer pause.
First, the main unique feature I see is the built in camera which apparently gives you a preview of cut/engraved finished part on your computer screen with the material as it's positioned inside the machine. This also (apparently, it's not clear), allows you to correct for misaligned material inside the machine. These are nice features, but it's perfectly possible to cut and engrave without them.
One big problem with operating this inside your home is the fumes. Now, they do mention that the base unit needs to be vented to the outside. What this means is that your neighbors (and you, if the wind is right) will have to smell the exhaust from this machine. It's not a nice smell if you're cutting acrylic. Though I personally got used to the scent of vaporized acrylic over time, your neighbors might not be so inclined.
So they also offer a $500 add-on ($1000 regular price) to filter the air so you can exhaust inside. The add on is smaller than the already small laser cutter. This is quite a feat and I would really like to know how they got it to work. You see, the fumes/smoke from a laser cutter can really clog up a particulate filter pretty quickly. Wood produces wood smoke, and acrylic vapor is quite sticky when it settles. So you have to have a powerful pump to draw the fumes through the filter. Then you need a good amount of activated charcoal to get rid of the smelly stuff.
If you look at the professional model air filters, they're $2000+ and you have to buy filters and media regularly.
Laser cutters get messy inside, so if you buy one, be prepared to clean it out regularly to keep the optical and mechanical components clean.
Problems with operation can START A FIRE, so be prepared to watch the machine 100% of the time while it's cutting.
(founder/CEO here)
I vented a 60W chinese laser out my window for a year in the suburbs, but I've learned never to underestimate what neighbors may complain complain about. The air filter is definitely a good idea. If you do the math on the volume, and compare it to the actual volume of the filter of e.g. a Purex, you'll find it's similar. Almost half of the volume of the Purex is in the fans or open airspace; we have the advantage of a ton of airflow from the Glowforge itself, so the filter needs proportionately less. We also have a sealed (basic) or almost-sealed (pro) case so it's easier to build up negative pressure and move the exhaust through.
Cleaning stinks, and wrecks alignment - the tube and turning mirrors are completely sealed, including the tube output, so there's just one flat window to wipe clean (and it unscrews for easy replacement). The head has a window and purge air to keep it clean too.
We're mitigating a lot of the risk of fire by avoiding trouble situations in software (e.g. not cutting a piece of material where the dimensions make it an effective wick, detecting obstacles on the bed, accelerators to detect problems quickly) but you're right that you don't want to run it unattended.
Is it true the machine requires connection to internet or your cloud to cut or engrave? I was about to order a Pro until I read this in the comments. I expect to be able to use this machine with my laptop running some program and "send to laser", no internet connection required.
Cofounder/CEO here, just finished with Makercon and catching up.
The Glowforge does require a cloud connection to operate. We use cloud vs. local a host of reasons including the motion planner, alignment, image recognition, and faster feature development.
But based on the excellent point made here that nobody wants a paperweight if we fall off the globe, we decided to make a change. We're going to do a GPL release of the firmware so people can do whatever they want, including porting offline functionality. You buy it, it's yours, you should get to do what you want with it.
1. When you mention planner, etc, does this imply the cloud service is involved not just in a prep phase, but actively during the control loop while the device is cutting? The latter would be worrisome to me.
2. Will you be able to elaborate at all on the functionality of the firmware (and/or provide protocol documentation for it) prior to ship? I'm not sure how comfortable I am pre-ordering without understanding just how much work there is between the device as delivered and an actual, functional, standalone cutter.
I see on the blog that modifying the firmware invalidates warranty coverage. This seems like another argument for protocol docs and/or ability to usefully have at least one cut path that does not tie you to an online service or nuke your warranty.
Just speculating here, but it could be similar to how Google such do voice controls. Meaning that there is some processing that needs to take place that is offloaded to some server cluster somewhere, rather than attempting to do it locally.
Yes. Actually both intake and exhaust fans. Both of those are under software control, so they only run at the speed required for the job. Then the $500 air filter option has its own internal fans to assist with air, also under software control.
If you use the filter, there's nothing else hanging off the back of the device except a power cord. (My old laser had a squirrel cage fan, an aquarium pump, and a chiller tethered to it at all times!)
Munching on wood with an Epilog laser will produce copious volumes of smoke, and the air assist and 400CFM blower are not trivial pieces of equipment to embed in a unit to properly quell any fires and actually extract all the air needed.
My air assist is small enough that I could see a similar machine engineered to fit into the bottom part of this product. As for exhaust, you can get surprisingly good air flow with certain low CFM setups - my local makerspace uses a computer fan that does something with pressure that I don't understand. I don't think the goal of the exhaust is to quell a fire but to move smoke away from the beam and outside.
Have some cartridge of CO2 inside that is getting released in such scenario? There's not much volume inside so it should do the job. IANAF, just wondering.
For a while I've been wondering if you could flood the chamber of a laser cutter with CO_2 routinely, not just to prevent fires but to prevent the scorching that laser cutting leaves on wood. If that would consume too much CO_2, would it be workable to instead spray it topically onto the point of the cut, a bit like the inert shielding gases that some forms of arc welding use?
Air assist is a classic thing on many decent laser cutters, especially for the reasons mentioned. On our lasersaur for example, a builtin air nozzle blow compressed air at the place where the laser beam hits the material being cut...
On reflection this probably can't work, as apparently wood melts only at stupidly high temperatures. Though maybe a lower temperature to embrittle the carbon would be enough?
As always, HN never fails to make sure the top comment is negative in some way.
Dan, I think this is a phenomenal product. I didn't know much about laser cutters and their potential, and you did a great job making this accessible. I wish you luck and hope to see your company grow.
I think this is part of the reason I actually very much appreciate the comments section on HN. Not for negativity, but because often the top comment is a good summation of the caveats to whatever's behind a given link. People selling products are not wont to tell me why their product might not be as great as it seems, unless required to by law. Even then, only in tiny print.
I'm certainly not an expert in many areas (Lasers for one), including many of the areas that these products pop up in, so when something seems too good to be true (or if I happen to have said expertise) the first thing I do is hop over to comments to see what the rest of the community has to say.
I always try to take both links and comments with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of skepticism and try to come to my own conclusions. That's not easy to do if I only get one side of the story and I don't happen to have years of experience in the relevant fields.
True, you make good points. I just think in this case, the product warrants some kudos as the top comment. This is probably in the top 1% tier of quality startups.
I'd consider the original comment a positive contribution. Just because it can be seen as having a negative tone, this one of caution, it is backed up with a heft of substance explaining the thought process behind it. It also resulted in another informative response from the founder. That's a good thing we should encourage.
A negative comment is one that doesn't contribute anything. A negative generalization about a community that doesn't provide an explanation could be seen as an example of a negative comment.
Negative comments are appropriate in this case. This looked so amazing, but the comments here point out the very important fact that this requires access to the internet to function, something that the co-founder so far hasn't addressed in the comments despite numerous requests for an answer.
Also, I don't disagree with your comment, I just hate that the top comment always seems to put a damper on every truly promising launch or product - with Dropbox's launch being a famous example.
I didn't want to be negative or put this product down. I just wanted to be sure the people who are looking at this to know what they are getting into. The points I made about this machine could apply to ANY laser cutter.
As a class of machine, they're just not as easy to use as, say, an inkjet printer. As I said, the camera feature looks nice, and according to danshapiro, they've done a lot to help with the maintenance issues by enclosing the optics.
I personally think its a pretty cool product. However, their insistence on having everything routed through the cloud doesn't seem appealing to me. If they close down or even if Google has some sort of service interruption, this thing becomes nothing more than a paper weight.
After watching their video on tested, I think you are spot on with the concerns. It looks like the laser printers does generate some nasty fumes [1] and there is the section where you actually see the wood catching on fire [2]. Not sure if plastic should have been the choice for the enclosure.
Regardless, cool product but could have been better.
Yep, was about to shell out for a Pro, but now I'm going to wait for #1 version 2.0 for them to work out all the kinks and #2 this cloud connection business. I refuse to buy any equipment that doesn't work if it's disconnected.
I suppose one way to solve this problem is to make sure that as much of the machine as possible in the cutting area is made of non-flammable material. Even if a fire starts it won't spread. Not possible with this one though, as the housing seems to be made of plastic.
Every issue you mentioned apart from the terrible fumes are problems that already exist in one's home with cooking in your own home, and people, seeing the convenience of cooking in their homes, have adapted to it. Regarding fumes actually, the smell from my neighbor's cooking isn't always to my liking either, but, perhaps, burnt plastic might be worse and equally undesirable to all people.
I think one thing that was not clear are the fumes are extremely toxic. Rarely do you cook where the fumes could make you go unconscious or cause long term health effects. If you dont believe me, check out:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475175/]
I guess that makes sense. I thought of the smell as nauseous but being dangerously unhealthy (than breathing the same concentration smoke from a fire, I'm assuming is the comparison) makes it involve different levels of health issues. I'd suppose they'd have to make the buyers sign waivers, huh, otherwise they have a number of civil class-action suits waiting--from which they lose anyway since a waiver would make the cutter much less attractive.
First, the main unique feature I see is the built in camera which apparently gives you a preview of cut/engraved finished part on your computer screen with the material as it's positioned inside the machine. This also (apparently, it's not clear), allows you to correct for misaligned material inside the machine. These are nice features, but it's perfectly possible to cut and engrave without them.
One big problem with operating this inside your home is the fumes. Now, they do mention that the base unit needs to be vented to the outside. What this means is that your neighbors (and you, if the wind is right) will have to smell the exhaust from this machine. It's not a nice smell if you're cutting acrylic. Though I personally got used to the scent of vaporized acrylic over time, your neighbors might not be so inclined.
So they also offer a $500 add-on ($1000 regular price) to filter the air so you can exhaust inside. The add on is smaller than the already small laser cutter. This is quite a feat and I would really like to know how they got it to work. You see, the fumes/smoke from a laser cutter can really clog up a particulate filter pretty quickly. Wood produces wood smoke, and acrylic vapor is quite sticky when it settles. So you have to have a powerful pump to draw the fumes through the filter. Then you need a good amount of activated charcoal to get rid of the smelly stuff.
If you look at the professional model air filters, they're $2000+ and you have to buy filters and media regularly.
Laser cutters get messy inside, so if you buy one, be prepared to clean it out regularly to keep the optical and mechanical components clean.
Problems with operation can START A FIRE, so be prepared to watch the machine 100% of the time while it's cutting.