BEST LASER CUTTER FOR HOME USE // Top 5 Reasons to Buy a Muse 3D over a Glowforge

are you looking to buy a laser cutter and engraver for your makerspace there are many ranging from the famous cheap chinese k-40 to units costing well over fifteen thousand dollars for my shop i compare two of the most common mid-range laser cutters the glow forge and the muse 3d from full spectrum laser in the end i purchased the muse 3d and if you want to find out why then stick around and i'll detail the top five reasons i bought them use 3d hi i'm steve and i recently decided to buy a new mainstream consumer laser cutter and engraver for my makerspace since i will use this laser to do paying jobs in my business i wanted to avoid the cheap 400 chinese co2 lasers that sell on amazon and ebay these lasers tend to use ridiculously cheap parts and provide limited safety and i ruled them out fairly quickly after conversations with a few owners so having discounted the low end of the market what are the best choices while there are numerous companies making products in the higher end consumer market i narrowed my choice down to two of the most popular offerings first is the glowforge which you've no doubt seen advertised on television commercials and online ads now i'm definitely not a glowforge hater since i know a few people that own and love them but there were a number of reasons why it wasn't my choice instead i selected the muse 3d from full spectrum laser and if you're also struggling with this choice then here are my five top reasons why i chose the muse 3d over the glowforge my first reason for buying a muse 3d was the company itself fsl who makes the muse has been around since 2010 which is roughly six years longer than glowforge this has given them more time to evolve their technology with several generations of their laser models by contrast low forge is still on their initial technology platform for four years and while this might arguably improve quality they are essentially stagnant on product evolution on the subject of products one clear reason for my purchase of the muse was due to the fact that full spectrum laser also makes industrial lasers which have much higher performance and reliability demands and in my mind this would inevitably trickle down to their high-end consumer lasers consider the fact that the muse 3d has an all-metal case which is something you'd expect to see in a production environment glowforge makes one basic laser focused solely on the home consumer and its plastic case while attractive is something more comfortable in your living room related to this is how the products are marketed while glowforge is possibly overexposed with endless television and online ads the muse 3d is limited to mostly word of mouth moreover being something of a technical purist i was personally a bit disturbed by what i interpreted as misleading glowforge ads claiming their product was a 3d laser printer it certainly isn't and glowford should honestly be a bit ashamed by this deliberate misconception the last concern about any company's products is how they support them i know i'm going to face lots of negative arguments for saying this but i do believe the muse might have better support than the glowforge glowforge seems to only provide online support through their website or chat and it seems relatively difficult to talk to a real person by contrast talking to somebody at fsl if you need to seems trivial either by online means email or even a telephone call now i'll be honest in saying this that just a couple of days after i received my muse 3d the main ventilation fan failed now it's just a basic 120 millimeter fan and i've had them fail in 3d printers frequently so it wasn't a huge issue for me i reached out to fsl using their online form and within 10 minutes a nice person named justin sent me a message to tell me what i needed to do to have my order processed and just a couple of hours after that i got another message saying my new fan was being shipped and just a few days later as i record this video my replacement fan has arrived now i know people who've waited days just to hear back from glowforge of course support varies from person to person and and depends on the situation but i can't say enough good things about fsl support and though this was my biggest worry when i purchased the muse it just wasn't an issue when i actually needed to contact them the number four reason to buy a muse is what i would call the day one experience which is those first couple of days where you unbox and set up your laser and then start poking through the features on your way to a first cut or an engrave generally speaking the glow forge and the muse match pretty closely in initial experience with both allowing you to be up and running in a half an hour or so with the glowforge you do need to go online with your computer to create an account and pair your laser to it before you can print anything and in the case of the muse you need to connect the air and water tubing between the laser in the cool box but this is pretty simple and takes less than a minute if you're interested in how to do this you can see a video here on the subject of cooling though one place the muse does have an advantage is with the use of that external cooler whereas the glow forge cooling is all internal why this matters is because with the external cooling you can actually replace the basic water cooler on the muse with a proper chiller and engrave continuously all day if you want even with the basic setup for cooling though i experienced no significant temperature change in the water and it has been fairly quiet to operate my anecdotal evidence on the glowforge suggests that there are a number of times when you just need to shut it down to cool off for a while however given the market i believe they're going after this is probably not much of a concern so with everything set up and running you're ready to power on the laser and start controlling it on the glowforge front panel you will be met with a single glowing button that you can double tap to start cutting after uploading your design to the glowforge cloud this works well but lacks the tactile feel that most makers would expect the muse 3d by contrast offers a large color touch panel where you can control the laser setup and movement as well as di reach diagnostics and material alignment details when you are cutting or engraving you can even watch the progress on live on your video feed right on that display on its own this is a pretty compelling feature the final initial feature it you'd want in any laser is is how it handles large parts for the muse 3d you can remove the entire bottom plate of the laser and most importantly fsl actually wants you to be able to do this this allows for engraving on larger parts that will not normally fit in the laser bed for example if you have a large cabinet or box and you want to be able to engrave on top of it you can raise the muse to the proper height and print directly on the part fsl also makes a riser box to provide a higher mounting for your laser allowing you to engrave on top of a large item without having to lift the laser the glowforge provides no such ability to drop the bottom out of your laser though there are documented stories of glowforge users taking a saw to the bottom plate to achieve the same effect yikes the glowforge pro does provide a pass-through panel for longer objects though and that might provide some convenience for a number of users in the end the initial out of the box experience while good for both products seems to give the edge to the muse 3d it's simple to set up and a match for the glowforge but its intuitive front panel display and expandability were part of my decision to bypass the glowforge pro in favor of the muse at number three on my top five list of reasons to buy amuse 3d is the number of accessories that are available this choice is an easy one since there are basically no accessories you can buy for the glowforge but for the muse 3d it's another story first there is the previously mentioned riser option that allows you to boost the height of your laser so that there's ample room inside the cabinet for much larger items but in conjunction with this riser there's also the rotary tool which is used to engrave round objects this is the perfect accessory if you plan to engrave things like mugs or tumblers allowing you to simply drop items on the rotary tool and engrave perfectly around the curved surface if you are cutting and engraving items you might also want a different lens for your laser in fact fsl offers three different lenses with focal lengths of one and a half two and a half and five inches there is no option like this on the glowforge at all which means you're going to be limited to cutting heights of about 2 inches next because the muse provides external cooling there's also improved cooling options like chillers that fsl can provide though arguably you can buy far cheaper solutions on amazon or ebay but that is the beauty of the of the fsl experience you aren't locked into technology or exclusive accessories and finally there are a couple of different fume extractors available these are great if you have to place your laser somewhere where there isn't access to an outside vent but be aware these are very expensive options and you'll soon realize that rearranging your workspace to accommodate the outside vent is probably a couple of thousand dollars cheaper after purchase accessories can be very important so when considering a glowforge versus amused 3d make sure you consider what you can do after you've spent all that money having options available to let your laser grow as you do is something you don't want to overlook consider what you might want to do in the future so that you can buy the right laser today of all the ways you can interact with your laser the software has to be the most important and this is why it's number two on my reason on my list of reasons to choose a muse 3d now the software is typically something you're going to use every time you turn on your laser and further it actually has to be something you want to use this is one of the major differentiators between the glowforge and the muse both lasers offer a reasonable user experience but with the muse all of the software you could ever want is built right into the laser whereas with the glowforge the software is available remotely but more on this in a minute what this really means to you in the real world is that you can literally place your muse laser anywhere where there's power and use it effectively moreover the software features between the glow forge and the muse differ significantly as well the glowforge provides software that mostly focuses on uploading and storage of your designs as well as general layout on selected materials and it serves these functions quite well however to do your design you do need an external drawing tool like adobe illustrator or inkscape for almost anything you'll ever design the muse 3d on the other hand provides all of the typical layout and material management features but also provides some basic drawing tools now honestly you aren't going to be able to draw a fractal design with this tool but if you want to make something simple like a label or some basic shapes you can do this with ease while you're sitting at your laser to be clear both of these lasers provide a good easy to use software experience though the muse offers somewhat more capability for design rather than the sim just simple layout it also provides a lot more control over settings for each material though unlike the glowforge there are very few predefined materials and no automatic detection of standard materials like the glowforge however many glowforge users complain that the qr code scanning of materials is kind of flaky and they end up selecting these materials manually anyway finally we come to my number one most important reason for buying a muse 3d over a glowforge and that's because of connectivity with the glowforge you must always be connected to the internet whereas the muse can run completely standalone this is definitely not a feature you want to us underestimate if you're a maker like me many of you will have a separate makerspace that may or may not have reliable network access my shop is in a building detached from my house and while i do have wi-fi it's not very fast or reliable and if i had to depend on this connection to upload my designs to glowforge just to have them push them back down to my laser i would become very frustrated with the performance of that workflow this always connected requirement while annoying raises a couple of more important questions though the first is vendor lock-in glowforge is literally forcing you to have a relationship with them whether you want to or not and without them your laser simply stops working this means that at some point in the future they can arbitrarily choose to start charging you for storage of your designs or even basic access to your laser and if they decide you need to pay ten dollars a month you have no choice you have to pay it and and what happens if they go out of business the more important question though is related to data security in my career i've spent a number of years focused on data security and when a vendor collects your data and isn't very clear what they're going to do with it you should be very concerned depending on the license agreement they might actually take ownership of your information and start profiting from it at your expense for example they may sell your information to resellers of materials or design files who in turn might start spamming you with email trying to sell you things you don't really want or this situation could even be worse since you've completely lost control of your information suffice it to say this was the single reason why i didn't buy a glowforge and it's also the same reason i would prompt just about anyone else from buying one either instead i favored the more private approach of the muse 3d that has no requirement at all for me to share information with fsl no one else knows what i'm using my laser for or when i'm using it so i won't suddenly start receiving convenient ads for materials that i just happen to be using at any given moment and should anything happen to fsl it might impact me as far as parts but it doesn't impact me as far as using my laser in the long term so there you have my top five reasons for purchasing a muse 3d over a glowforge pro again i have nothing against the glowforge except perhaps their persistent network connectivity and all that comes with it but for my use case the muse simply checked more boxes if you got value from this video then please hit the like button and if you have a different perspective feel free to leave a comment and i'd be happy to start a discussion also if you want to see more videos like this or other topics that help make your world then tap the subscribe button as well and click the bell to be notified whenever new videos are posted to the channel as always thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Steve Makes Everything

Views: 66,029

Keywords: best laser cutter, fsl, fsl muse, full spectrum, full spectrum laser, full spectrum laser muse, full spectrum laser muse 3d, full spectrum laser muse unboxing, full spectrum laser projects, full spectrum laser review, full spectrum muse, glowforge, glowforge review, glowforge vs muse, how to, install, k40 laser, laser cut acrylic, laser cutter, laser cutter review, laser engraver, make, maker, muse, muse 3d, retina engrave 3, retina engrave v3.0, review, stevemakeseverything

Id: ol_wGmyNDpc

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021