If anyone here is considering buying a Glowforge laser, they’re 50% off for their pre-sale for a few more days - I think pre-sale ends 10/22 or 10/23. Plus you can get another $100 off (and get me $100 too) if you use my referral URL - Your At-Home 3D Laser Printer | Glowforge. GF people must be friends with Inventables somehow - they drop their name a lot when talking about where to get materials to cut.
Looking forward to adding the Glowforge to my tool collection along with my X-Carve!
Sure looks cool… $2k for a 40W laser system that looks pretty user-friendly.
Yeah I’d already been eyeballing lasers anyways, so between the pre-sale price and the user-friendly side of it, it was a tough one to pass up. Plus if I change my mind, they’re taking cancellations on orders right up until they ship, so I’ve got time to change my mind if I want. (although the more I watch & read on it, the less likely that seems!)
Still a bit out of my budget range, but not impossibly so… Although if they do actually raise their price as high as they’re talking there, they have a lot of competition in that “final” price range.
It is nice machine or looking nice machine on advirtesement. Watching commercial demo is not enough for me. High tech electronics for sure. Self focusing, material recognizing are the most eye catching futures. What about the rest. I’ll wait to see customer experiences. Fair price is $1500 to $1600 on basic model to me. M2c.
Read this about it from users of commercial CO2 Lasers. Critic’s perspective?
Thanks for the link. That proofs what I said.
This is looks like another Cricutcut machine to me. I’m sure their Firmware will tie this machine to monthly subscribe plans. Besides, so far it is more likely Household appliance. My price estimate might go down withing a month or two.
If I pay for the Laser Engraving machine, I’ll go with the proven name brands like Epilog Laser.
For those who care, this machine is totally cloud based. It’s a brick without the internet. And they evade questions when asked.
They have been upfront about the cloud aspect. This is in their blog:
http://glowforge.com/blog/gpl-licensed-open-source-firmware-for-glowforge/
They’ve said that nothing we have currently seen in the software would be subscription based. Of course the operative word there is probably “currently”.
I read through some of the sawmill creek posts and figured out pretty quick that are a lot of pro laser users with $40k machines. Of course they look down on something consumer-targeting. That shouldn’t shock anyone - especially if you hit CNC forums looking for XCarve thoughts before you ordered yours. 
To call this a cricut…c’mon. Seriously? But yeah - it’s definitely a household product, but they aren’t saying it isn’t.
Although to what Alan said about waiting to see what people think one they have it, that is exactly why I ordered one during pre-sale. I can cancel until my unit ships, and I am waaaaay far to the back of the line. I will have plenty of time to bail if it isn’t living up to expectations once it’s out in the wild.
I’m still reading up on Epilog, FSL, etc to see if something else may be a better fit for me. But so far, nope. (I have major space constraints, so external exhaust & cooling systems are deal breakers for me)
The Glowforge got me thinking about purchasing the cheap chinese K40 laser again. You can purchase one now for $366.00 including shipping.
Checking out the forums, they have come a long way and you only need to add a few dollars to make it more reliable. I have a spare Gshield and arduino to replace the electronics too.
There is also a company that sells a lot of upgrades for the K40 as well
http://www.lightobject.com/DK40-upgrade-parts-C68.aspx
A bit cheaper than the Glowforge and I will be able to use all my existing software.
I’ve been a big fan of the guys at Tested for a while now. They’ve been covering GlowForge for about 5 months. Very cool to see a product like this evolve. Sounds like they’re on a similar path as Inventables, providing a great product, great customer service, less barrier to entry, facilitating their community creativity, etc.
http://www.tested.com/tech/543141-meet-glowforge-3d-laser-printer/
I’ve been playing with lasers since I was a kid and using CNC since I went off to college in '87, so this is all Star Trek stuff for me come to life (other than the flying cars we were promised). We’re even 3D printing food and body parts! Being a woodworker by hobby/trade, I intuitively feel more versatility out of an XC1000. For example, I can put a laser on my XC, but you can’t laser cut aluminum with their machine as awesome as it is. This might make a great adjunct to the XC, much like the guys with 3D printers being able to print their own dust collection attachments. In the end though, I think the XC is the anchor tenant to the shop.
@Zach_Kaplan - Have you guys spoken with Tested/hopped on that bandwagon? I did a search on their site and “inventables” only brings up “inventions” results…
Chris
I have briefly talked to Will @Tested
I’m going to try and talk to them about Carvey.
I was on the fence as well, debating this for a couple weeks. Decided to pull the trigger myself. Especially (as Mike stated in his second post) I will be way back in the line and able to cancel if it doesn’t live up to the hype once it starts to get real world testing.
Here’s my referral link too. $100 off for each of us.
(And thanks Mike, I used yours)
Thanks! Enjoy!
Sure looks cool, although it seems almost a “too good to be true” thing… That’s a LOT of promised capability.
I’d still be very tempted if I had the two grand to shell out, I’d really love a laser for stuff I can’t X-Carve!
All futures are remarkable, and I believe it will be better when starts shipping. Have no problem there. What makes me uncomfortable is Cloud Base application.
Take a look at Cricut Explore complaints on the internet. It is the miracle machine, amazing cutting equipment for crafts. But after one year, it’s tided all customers to Cloud base application, which you have to pay for yearly subscription fee. They’re Firmware is not changeable. They won all the trials against who try to produce software for it.
If it works with Standard Market applications, I buy it. But no explanation yet.
That was one of those funny things, they won all the lawsuits… but have damaged their reputation to the point that their once totally dominant market position is down to less than 50% marketshare now and dropping. Provo really hurt themselves trying to suppress their competition with lawyer bombardments.
And yeah, the web-based-only software is a little worrisome. For this crew, I’d almost think one of the cheap Chinese lasers retrofitted with a G-shield and arduino for control might be a better choice…
Cricut was trying to stop development. Glowforge is opening it up and saying do what you want with it, at your own risk. They’ve also said that offline printing is “something we’re working on” - of course it could also be something that never materializes. Apples & oranges on how they’re approaching their cloud dependability in terms of end-user & community flexibility.
I guess I’d rather be on the pre-order & wait-and-see side of things than to be kicking myself for missing out on the discounted pricing if it all goes as they plan. They are certainly promising a lot, but it seems like most of those promises have already been demonstrated with their test machines.
If I had the cash available, I’d probably be doing the same, honestly. I doubt they’ll ever actually end up at their “final” prices, given that a cost that high would put them into the market with some other machines that are significantly better tested and more known.
I’ll certainly feel better once the dependence on their servers to run your two-grand machine is ended also, it would make me more confident in my machine’s ability in the future. Also, once these have been run for a bit by non-affiliated people to verify simple stuff, like “how long does the laser tube last” and “is the cooling actually adequate.” 
…and there is a fire going on on the work surface while watching review demo with the air filter option. How that fire will affect lenses. 
