Friday, December 02, 2016
Hands-On with the Glowforge Laser Cutter!
Tested: 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
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3 comments:
I’d love to have a desktop laser cutter for personal projects, and this one looks like it could be quite promising. It’s a decent size for something that sits on a desk, and it definitely looks up to the task of cutting through wood and acrylic, but I’d be super bummed to be stuck with a web based interface like the one shown. If I’m investing all this money into a cutter, I’d definitely want to have a driver installed on the computer that I was to use with it, and I’d also definitely want to be able to use it without a connection to the internet. It seems like Glowforge had made it a goal to get rid of the need for a driver while maintaining more complicated usability (feeding it a CAD file), but while I applaud the attempt to get more into the laser cutting community, completely forgoing the direct connection between the file I drew and the thing cutting makes me a little skeptical of this cutter.
I really like the idea of laser cutters becoming something that you can have in your home. However, while I like most of the things Glowforge is doing with their product I share Alex’s skepticism towards the online only interface. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any one the features their interface offers (and I really like the idea of being able to have it scan the image I want cut) but it would be nice to be able to use it without an internet connection. I would much prefer a driver I can install on whatever computers I want to use with the laser cutter. A system that integrates the laser’s software right into cad and lets me treat it as just another printer would be even better but I don’t know if that’s even possible. That being said, I may not be part of the specific audience their aiming for since I don’t foresee too many times when I would be using something like this without some kind of cad drawing being involved and a lot of what they seem to be focusing on is removing the need for a cad file at all.
The Glowforge laser cutter has been a product that I’ve heard a lot about in the past year and it is nice to see they are in final stages of development. The fact they have been able to achieve so much in a desktop laser cutter is amazing to see when only a few years ago laser cutting was only a commercial tool. Over the summer at the company I interned was talking about buy this very laser cutter for their office space. This just goes to show the opportunities this machine opened for so many industries. I think there are many small companies and hobbyists that will benefit from this type of product. I look forward to what these people do with the technology and how Glowforge continues to improve what they have started. From the Go Fund Me campaign that was started last year to the now almost complete product this company has mad leaps and bounds from there beginning and I look forward to what else they come up with.
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