Unboxing a freaking laser - Glowforge Pro
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2020-05-05
·
1,838 words · ~9 min read
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- Oh, man. I am excited 'cause right now we get to have the largest unboxing
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on ShortCircuit. Well, not this one right here. We have (groaning)
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this whole thing right here to unbox here today.
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It's a laser cutter, you already know that from the title. I wanna start with the little one,
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'cause I know that this one's a laser cutter, the other one's a filter,
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but I have legitimately no clue what's in this box right here. So this right here, you would put your work on top of this
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laser shoots down and then curves out your stuff. Everything's kind of in this direction.
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So the amount of area here that the laser is actually hitting is pretty small,
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which is great because if this was just like a flat piece of metal, it would heat up a whole bunch.
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Cool, we've also got... We've got a dryer vent here that's probably for ventilation.
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So there's two big problems with our current laser cutter. It's not very repeatable.
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So like if you want to cut a circle and then you go and cut that same circle again,
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it's not gonna line up quite perfectly. It's just not very good
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and also like not repeatable and not reliable.
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This right here is the optional filter. So you don't necessarily have to get this
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and our plan for the old laser cutter was to put it into a fume hood that strikes all the fumes,
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shoots them up out of the ceiling throwing some filters and crap. But this is way cheaper.
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It's like a thousand bucks and you can put it literally anywhere. So we don't have to worry about,
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where we put it and put the fume hood in is a permanent thing.
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We're definitely putting it to new for now. So the fun thing about this is that you don't need to bother venting it
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like out a window or anything. You just place it wherever and you are good to go.
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So we went for the Pro model because it's the biggest
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and it's the fastest and it's the most powerful. So this right here has 45 Watts of lasering power.
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That's only marginally more than what we have right now. Our current one is 40 Watts.
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And the difference you're going to feel between those two
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is basically nothing, but this should be because like I trust it.
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We should be able to push it way faster than our current one.
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It's very well packed. Just come in and look at this. This thing is not going anywhere.
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Another huge advantage of this laser over our last one
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is that this is a pre-built kit.
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You basically just unbox it and we should have relatively little setup
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before able to actually get cutting things. Whereas the last one, I think it took a week and a half.
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It's interesting that they have the laser just sitting out like this,
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like in ours, it's in a rear compartment,
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which I guess that is kind of how they allow for the pass through.
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So on this one right here, your cut size is 19 and a half inches
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kind of like this way by infinity, they say.
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So there's a pass through here and on the back, so you can just feed material through it
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and then as long as it's not too wide, you can just, (groaning)
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So this is what actually is going to focus the laser, I imagine.
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So the laser shoots out this way, providing 40 watts power into the mirror back there,
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it'll bounce and come around and then come out of this little lens right here.
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That goes in there and this just magnets on, is that how it works?
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So I just went to setup.glowforge.com, and the first thing that it's making me do
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is create a Glowforge account. So that kind of brings up one of the big problems with this,
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which is that, it's always connected to the internet
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and that's how you get files to and from it. This was something that was a really big problem at first
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because if the company goes under a year, basically left with a big old paper paperweight,
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it is a bit better now because they have...
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I think it's called Open Forge. It was like a GitHub thing, all the source codes there.
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You can take it and run it on other software,
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but not super easily. Like, I would really like it if we could have the web app
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for people that sort of know what they're doing,
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but don't entirely know. Then, like if we could just run like LightBurn on it
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or something for like me and Colin, where we actually know what this thing is capable of
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and like really get into the nitty gritty with it. Be really careful when you're moving steppers.
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Just because if you move them too fast, they will put current through everything,
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which is not great for your electronics. Oh, it just sits down in there.
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Kinda arrives in a spot where it feels good.
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It's the clamping on with this thing that you kinda use your hands to pull apart,
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which is just not as good as if they had used the ones where it's like a screw,
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'cause then you can like get it in place and then tighten it much easier.
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If I was them, I definitely would've saved the money by using these ones.
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I think this one's like $4,500, so it's not a cheap option for sure.
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Hey, it's water cooled. Look at that.
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You can see the water pumping right through here. I'm guessing that it has some sort of anti-microbial stuff
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in there, so it doesn't get on nasty pants. So one of the things that you want in a laser cutter
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is for air to be blasted kind of right at your target
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just as like fire suppression. So instead of,
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like the wood that you're cutting out, catching on fire, it just blows it out basically.
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Connect to electrical power. Did it? Yeah. So that's being always connected to the internet
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is both good and bad like for one it's always connected to the internet.
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Do you really want that? But on the other hand, like you're able to print from. Damn it! It's not print.
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You're able to cut it, stuff from your phone or like from like a tablet
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or from the other side of the office. So you don't need to be like right there, which is nice,
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but at the same time, I don't know, I'm not running a laser cutter without being decided
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'cause things can catch on fire. (mumbling)
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So I need a bit of material to cut here. I think this will do just fine, right around 0.4 of an inch.
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So we've got that in there. So if I close this,
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is it going to show me what that's at? Oh, there we go. It did it. Good job.
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It has a camera and now I can just take the thing that I want to cut.
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Toss it on there. Actually, that's really the (murmuring). We're not gonna cut, we're gonna engrave it.
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So we're gonna put it right there. Enter settings.
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Well, let's say the power is 21, sure.
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Speed, 500. Let's see how fast it goes. So I have heard this camera's quite accurate in the middle,
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but as you get over to the sides, it can be like a quarter of an inch out,
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which is not ideal, although apparently you can calibrate it
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and get it down to like within a sixteenth, across the whole bed.
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Either way, it's way better than what we were doing before, which was basically just eyeballing it
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and doing like the print area and just kind of hoping that it sort of landed where you wanted it.
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Quite a big pane for like K side panels where you got one shot and then just done.
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Precision power. Auto-focus height in inches, 0.4.
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Number of passes, we'll do one... 21, sounds fine, actually let's drop that a tiny bit.
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16, let's say. Speed, 500. Can we go faster?
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What happens if I type in 1000? No, it won't let me do that.
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500.4. Enter. Back.
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Use uncertified material. Good God. All right, 0.4, submit.
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So that should be right there, ready. Print.
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So it does sound like there is some air pushing down. This thing is not quiet.
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(cutter roaring) We want to up the laser power a tiny bit for the next go.
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That is not enough. I have to say it's not super duper fast
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compared to something like, I don't know a Trotec, those things are way faster,
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but I don't know, that's way faster than our old ones. That was clearly not fast enough.
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Oh, that was at a power of one.
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Let's say power of 32.
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So this also is a good way to check the repeatability. So we have these tiny little lines in there
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you probably can't even see on camera and if we hit print and it lands right on those lines again,
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then we're in pretty good shape. So one thing that is cool about this
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is that it can laser etch on things that aren't completely flat.
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It does seem like it's taking half a while, but on the other one, you'd have to manually go in and set up the focus distance.
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So this is saving us heaps of time. So I don't like how it's kind of pausing there.
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Like you see how it's doing the different segments and then stopping for a second.
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That can mean that like, you can get a bit of fire if it stops.
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I can't tell if it's modulating the laser while it's doing that.
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That was pretty good though and looking, yeah, I can't see the other lines at all.
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So I'm guessing that it hit them pretty much dead on.
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It's been just under an hour and we've done our first little laser engrave here.
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That's awesome. Compared to the last one, I took like a week and a half.
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Get subscribed, click the affiliate link I guess, if you want to buy one of these
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and I don't know, I'll see you later. I'm excited to use this thing.