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OK so I go a new toy a Glowforge (GF) laser cutter. My Chinese laser cutter had sucky software. I guess they could not find anything better. The Glowforge is a definite improvement. The GF software is in-the-cloud and always current and up-to-date.

I had previously cut out 22 16" long trusses by hand (oh my G-D!) a while back. Although they weren't bad they were not perfect.  See the hand assembled green truss.

the GREEN truss has 10 separate parts ( if you have added that up that means 220 parts for all of the 22 trusses) to it that were cut and glued to create the verts and diagonals because I could not cut any of the inside triangle shapes with a band saw as one part. However, the laser-cut truss consists of only four(4) pieces that are interlocked together. Note also the top and bottom chord X-bracing.

Also because of the more solid jointing,  the laser cut trusses will be stronger at the joints than the band saw cut trusses; because I added the bolting plates.

The green truss to hours to cut and glue; the laser-cut truss took 6 minutes to cut and after filing the joints and painting it will take a few minutes more to glue!!!

Before I assemble,  I'm thinking of adding engravings of the bolting along the connected parts.

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Last edited by AlanRail
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Joe

unless you are building furniture I could not see buying the GF PRO, but I wanted the higher wattage and faster laser so I went for the Plus.

The GF software with the built-in cameras (2) allows seeing where the printed object is placed in the printer so you can manage the cuts BEFORE you print them.

So I just printed some brick patterns from postscript that I scored on the medium, then cut and created a brick pedestal. Scoring is different from engraving. The actions are controlled by changing the color of the lines; so RED lines are cut through; GREEN lines are Scored and BLUE lines are engraved.

Once you have bricks, I can then create my own bricked structures. But there are patterns in PostScript for all sorts of designs that can be modified for frequency of objects.

 

 

Very nice, thanks. I will look into this to help with my scratch builds in the future. I have been reluctant to buy, as I don't wish to sell stuff. I have only wanted limited copies for my own use.

 I need to focus on my layout in the upcoming months and will put scratch builds on hold. I do need some bridge work and other stuff, and I'm on the fence about investing in equipment or just subbing the work out.

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Ste 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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