ScottW514
cb41a6030c
The pthresh ladder on scrap puts the tube's two thresholds far apart: the discharge strikes between 2 and 3 percent duty, but nothing lases usefully below 16 percent (PWMSAR 20), and the rungs between show only a spot at each line start. $35 ships at 16 (grblhal-glowforge 9466f76, pinned here). The drill said current lift-off and first mark share a rung; this run falsifies that, so its docstring and read-the-material text now name both thresholds and warn that a start-of-line spot is below the threshold, not at it. A start-of-line spot is also what a full-power leak at a kernel run start would look like, so laser_stream_test gains a ladder session (rule 10): every FIRE tick must ride a commanded duty, and the fire ticks must divide evenly across rungs. Both hold exactly - six commanded duties, no others, and 28296 fire ticks on every rung - so the spots are the tube, not the stream. The harness now derives its expectations from the floor, which moves the M4 session's S500 plateau from 63 to 73. laser.power-floor is a new auto acceptance test, the suite's only non-firing one: a machine must actually carry the commissioned floor, since stored settings beat freshly baked defaults. Three cloud cuts of one square at Precision Power 1, 100 and Full Power show what the analog path is competing with: the power byte is pinned at 127 in all three, dose is FIRE-bit density on a fixed 7-tick period with the on-count dithered between adjacent integers, and the power setting never reaches the machine at all. Facts bank and item 17 carry the numbers; CAMPAIGN-LOG carries both sessions.
OpenGlow/ForgeFIRM Firmware for Glowforge
Open-source firmware for Glowforge brand CNC lasers. ForgeFIRM replaces the cloud-dependent factory software on the stock control board — no hardware modification — and gives the machine a local controller, a local web control panel, and a standard Grbl interface.
- Latest Release
- Installation Instructions
- Build Instructions
- Connecting LightBurn
- How motion and the laser are driven
- How cooling and airflow work
- The cameras and the video stream
- How the laser safing works
- How a release is accepted
- Community Support
What it does
Two controller modes, selected in the web panel and switchable while the machine is idle:
- GRBL mode — grblHAL runs on the machine and speaks Grbl 1.1 over TCP port 23, so LightBurn, UGS, and cncjs drive the laser directly. Motion runs on the board's own hardware step engine (SDMA + EPIT), fed live by the planner. M3/M4 dynamic laser power, coolant-flow verification, over-temp holds, and an operator button press to arm the laser for each job.
- Cloud mode — the machine presents itself as a stock Glowforge to the Glowforge web service, so the phone and web apps work as they always did. Optional, and off by default. GRBL mode jogs and cuts without it; the one GRBL-mode function that still reaches the Glowforge service is camera-referenced homing (below), until limit-switch homing lands.
Around both modes:
- A web control panel on port 8080: machine status and position, coolant and fan telemetry, safety-switch states, camera view, machine settings, hardware diagnostics, firmware updates, and boot-slot management.
- Camera-referenced homing:
$Hfrom any sender runs the factory-style camera homing cycle through the Glowforge service (a Glowforge account and a live service session are required for$H; everything else in GRBL mode runs without them), and the machine records where it is. - Cameras only capture with the lid closed. The lid camera faces the room once the lid is raised, so ForgeFIRM refuses every capture — live view, snapshot, and anything the Glowforge service asks for in cloud mode — until the enclosure is shut, and stops a running stream the moment the lid opens. See the cameras and the video stream.
Hardware
The control board is common to Glowforge Basic, Plus, and Pro. The 5 MP (OV5648) camera modules are fully supported and hardware-validated. The 8 MP (OV8856) modules found in "HD" units have a complete capture path — the kernel patches, device tree and sensor-aware capture profile they need are all in the build — but it has never run on an 8 MP machine, so treat it as untested; see the camera note in kas/README.md.
Safety
These machines contain a CO₂ laser: it burns, blinds, and starts fires. Never defeat the lid switches or interlock. Never leave a running job unattended — keep a fire extinguisher within reach. Read Before you cut — safety before your first job, and the Regulatory and legal section before installing. How the laser safing works describes the hardware safety chain and the software gates ForgeFIRM stacks on it.
A very important warning: this is experimental software. Use of this software could seriously maim or kill you or others, and voids your warranty. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Glowforge. Use it at your own risk.