[danshapiro]

(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.

[braum]

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.

[danshapiro]

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.

http://glowforge.com/gpl-licensed-open-source-firmware-for-g...

Thanks for the great feedback.

[swetland]

So, further questions:

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.

[adanto6840]

Based on his response[1] to a question here 220 days ago, sounds like it does require an internet connection...

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055330

[rsync]

"Is it true the machine requires connection to internet or your cloud to cut or engrave?"

I would also like very much to know the answer to this question.

[Apofis]

Why hell would it need this? I would really like to know as well. Was seriously about to place an order for a Pro but this leaves me wondering...

[digi_owl]

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.

[monochromatic]

This is the impression I got from watching a video linked elsewhere in these comments.

[bliti]

It is odd to require an Internet connection. The Epilog models at my disposal do not.

[jkaunisv1]

So is there a built-in exhaust fan?

[danshapiro]

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!)

[theatrus2]

Whats the ducting capability on exhaust?

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.

[jkaunisv1]

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.

[Drdrdrq]

Curious: why not mitigate fire danger by measuring temperature in beam vicinity using thermal camera?

[arama471]

Wouldn't that be too slow? By the time you see the temp spike on the cam you may have already started the fire

[comboy]

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.

[leoc]

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?

[markvdb]

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...

[danshapiro]

Glowforge does have both air assist and purge air FYI.

[leoc]

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?

[sixQuarks]

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.

[andrewstuart2]

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.

[sixQuarks]

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.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

The community here is under no obligation to cheer-lead.

[jordz]

+1 * sizeof(ulong)

[TheCowboy]

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.

[troisx]

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.

[sixQuarks]

The founder addresses this in a video review done by Tested.

https://youtu.be/0R3mMUsHFvU?t=13m48s

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.

[lowboy]

Tempering the excitement with some of the drawbacks is usually good.

[chromaton]

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.