ScottW514
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The fifth ladder, the first with a minimum pulse, moved the floor down a full rung: only 5 percent failed to mark, and 5 percent now strikes. The trace carries eight current segments where the run before it had seven, with fire beginning at 6.2 s exactly at rung 1 and the usual flat saturated final segment anchoring the count from the other end. That retracts what the previous entry concluded. Pulse length is not irrelevant: 10 percent moved from no mark at F100, with three times the dose per millimeter, to a mark at F300 at the same density, the only change being its pulses growing from 36-71 us stubs to 106 us. The matched-pairs argument was sound but drawn entirely from comparisons at or above 20 percent density, where every pulse length in play was already long enough - it generalized from the one regime where pulse length does not bite. Above ~100 us dose governs; below it pulse length does; below ~36 us the supply does not strike. The factory's 100 us quantum sits on that boundary. dladder now reads laser_pulse_min_ticks and prints what is actually emitted. Without that its table reports the pulse density alone would give, which is wrong wherever the minimum applies - at min 6 the bottom four rungs all emit 213 us and vary their rate instead, and the operator reads that table to interpret the material.
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.