My Glowforge finally arrived this week. I pre-ordered it in October 2015 so it took a little over two years of waiting to finally get it.
I designed and printed the obligatory escutcheon for the print button. I chose to name my Glowforge Scotty in honor of James Doohan. His character was my inspiration for becoming an engineer in the first place so I felt it was fitting.
The escutcheon after being printed.
The escutcheon after removing the tape covering.
A few thoughts on the Glowforge interface.
The interface and workflow will take a bit of getting use to but I think it will be fine once I’m more familiar with it. At first I was getting frustrated as I created a PNG image to scale. When I imported it, I thought it was too small until I realized the scale is in inches not mm. Once I realized my error, I looked for an option to change it but could not find one. I attempted to find a way to scale it to the correct size but there is no option to type in the size or view the exact measurement. It is necessary to guess what size it is by looking at the ruler on the screen which is not very accurate. What I ended up doing was using the 1:1 scale printout and placing it in the Glowforge so I could attempt to scale it correctly. Once I did that, I could not figure out how to do cuts where I wanted them. I did some reading and found that an SVG is needed for cuts. I then used Inkscape to create an SVG from a modified image with only the cuts. This worked and I was able to scale it exactly. I then created another PNG file with just the engraving and uploaded both files. I still needed to scale the engraving but that was easy and not critical. Once everything looked good, I pressed the print button. The Glowforge performed the cuts but not the engraving. I then removed the cut image and clicked print again. This time the engraving was done. On my next print, I will need to see what I did wrong here so I do not make that mistake again.
Overall it was easy to use the Glowforge but I do have a few concerns. Firstly, a desktop application to prepare the print would afford a better setup experience. Secondly, it is not possible to print if your network connection is down for any reason or if Glowforge goes out of business. While it is nice to use a device this way, it does leave users vulnerable to the existence of the company and the health of the web servers.
The original PNG file I created.
A modified PNG for the cuts. This file could not be used for the cuts as PNG files may only be used for engraving. I needed to convert this file to SVG using Inkscape.
The modified PNG for the engraving.
Overall, I’m pleased with the Glowforge. I just hope that the company and the web-service run well for many years to come so I may continue to use the Glowforge.
BTW: The size of the escutcheon is 119.903 x 119.903 mm. I was not able to upload the SVG for the cuts so if you decide to use the PNG, you will need to convert it to SVG and resize it.
