Glowforge Pro 1 Year Review

this is our one year anniversary of glow forge ownership and we'll show you what we think about it and how much we made right now what is up a welcome back do you like to do it builder make it so do we and we have a new video each week this week it's me and lola sparks one year anniversary and i'm only a little bit jealous lola that's what i named my glowforge lola sparks that's cause she lights up a room like a showgirl when she walks in a little bit he does call her lola this machine has transformed our business it actually turned our hobby into a business this week we're going to show you what we learned after one year of blowforge ownership we were going to share a little bit of our likes and dislikes what our challenges were some accomplishments we've had and how much we made i was gonna say last but not least how much money we've made over the past year so what do we like about it number one is the size it's 38 inches wide 21 inches deep nine inches tall and it fits perfectly on our craft table yep it fits perfectly in a craft space it's convenient all you need is a window or a space to vent it i don't really have any dislikes on the size number two the cutting size for the basic and the plus the cutting size is 19.5 inches wide and 11 and a half inches tall but for the pro this is what we have it's 19.5 inches wide and infinity long we enjoy the cutting size of the probe because it meets our needs we cut a lot of 18 inch rounds for door hangers what we dislike it would be nice if it were 24 inches wide i would like to make a 24 inch round but it's only 19 and it still cuts those 18 inch rounds and that is the most common size and we'll cut all the letters that fit on it three the laser power the pro is 45 watts which is plenty of power for us we cut a lot of quarter inch mdf actually we cut it like all day long and it cuts it fine and it meets our needs anything larger than a probably a quarter of an inch tall you're going to need a more powerful laser but like garrett said we do we do crafting type projects and so quarter inch is perfect for our needs so um no real dislikes there maybe maybe it would be nice if it cut a half inch piece of plywood but i've only needed that maybe once or twice three materials this cuts a wide range of materials engraves a wide range of materials and glowforge sells a wide range of materials that are proof grade and ready to go in the laser yeah the great thing about glow forge materials is they are a consistent cut they have very consistent materials and there's lots of different kinds different types of wood leather acrylic it's great that you can just go right back to glowforge and order any other types of materials you want and they come with that qr code so glowforge app just reads the qr code and knows exactly what it is and sets those settings automatically those low forged materials do get a bit expensive and they're usually sold out so you can go to your home improvement store and pick up materials you'll just have to cut them down to fit and maybe the quality is not as good yeah the quality control is pretty good at glowforge yes well they're not as consistent sometimes the mdf cuts and sometimes it doesn't the lighter cuts better than the darker we found anyway yeah we also found that a lot of people sell low forge materials on etsy and ebay five exhaust now this thing is mostly self-contained except you do need to vent it out a window or put it in an air scrubber the internal fan is loud it is like a shop vac and you do have to be close to a window the great thing though is it does have its own internal fan you don't have to have something external but you do have to account for that noise or you can use an inline fan and add that to the back you can get that on look at any of the glowforge user groups they'll show you lots of different models you can get those on amazon and that helps quiet it up a little bit you can also add an air filter which will help reduce the noise and you won't have to vent it out the window it'll be totally self-contained but the filter is expensive and the new cartridges are pretty costly also and if you're cutting a material like mdf the mdf has more glue and dust to it so you are going to clog up your filters quicker so that is an expense to think about we did use the filter but we went back to venting it out the window six the design application i like it because it's web-based and you can use it from anywhere it also uses the glowforge servers for the processing power you can upload your own svgs and you can cut your files you can even create svgs and export them from the glowforge app but if you're doing any real detail design work you're gonna probably want to use a more sophisticated design tool like adobe illustrator inkscape or silhouette studio the application does have some limitations like you can't do aligning or separating layers it also accepts your typical file formats it does scanning and the glowforge artwork is immense it goes on for days there's everything they even have some knockoff star wars stuff in there yeah yeah there's a lot a lot of images in there seven cutting engraving and scoring we learned a lot this year about layers and which should come first scoring engraving and cutting it's also capable of 3d engraving but we haven't tried that yet and i don't really have any dislikes to add to that one i think it does what we need to do score cut and engrave eight the camera this thing has a camera on the lid and i love it it's great for lining up things and materials especially if you're trying to get something really detailed it's also great because it does autofocus you don't have to set the laser head distance from the material yes it automatically detects if you're using quarter inch eighth inch and it adjusts that laser height for you you don't have to manually do that that's another one of those auto features of this thing the downside is the camera is in the middle of the lid so it is the most accurate in the center of your material and it gets less accurate as it moves outwards nine learning and support there is a ton of stuff out there about the glowforge there's a ton of places you can find information about settings cleaning i mean anything you want about it there's youtube channels facebook groups reddit communities glowforge groups glowforge has its own community and it is very active i mean every time you're scrolling on any of your social media any number of pages that you've liked will come across with so many tips and tricks i have learned so much just flipping through social media and reading someone's post saying oh no how do i and then you think yeah how do i and i have learned so many things so the support community is just excellent there's so many different resources out there do not be intimidated you'll learn so much so fast 10. glowforge customer service now this might be our most controversial uh like and dislike yep we hear a lot of horror stories about how horrible the customer service is but i put a gopro in my glow forge trying to get the best shot and really messed it up and broke one of the wheels on the gantry i emailed littleforge no questions asked they sent me two new wheels because it was still under warranty like i said no questions asked 11. she gets dirty especially if i'm cutting a lot of that quarter inch mdf so you have to keep it clean i learned that i do a two-minute daily clean i made a video over here and now i learned also that once a month i'll do a deep clean and clean the fan and everything i also made a video where i do that over here if you don't it gets very smoky and there can be flare-ups and there might be a fire my masking tape might have caught on fire before and we do keep a fire extinguisher a can of fire extinguisher near the glow forge just in case 12. a comparison we get a lot of questions about an x-carve versus the glow forge in all honesty we sold our x-carve because we found we really only used the glow forge and we used the x-car very little the x-carve was great we really liked the x-carve it was it's a routing cnc machine where this is a laser co2 laser cnc machine what we found is that we needed those more exact cuts and that's what the laser gives us with the routing machine it does a great job at 3d engraving and it does a great job at cutting out thicker materials so we could cut half inch plywood problem is they weren't very precise cuts the x-carve is great for cutting things that have less detail and for a quarter inch and above the glow forge is great for more detail and things that you'd be cutting for a quarter inch and below and since we're crafters and we did mainly quarter inch and eighth inch this suited our needs perfectly and last but not least like i said it's really turned our hobby into a business and not only our hobby into a business but also our daughter's hobby she now makes earrings and uses our glowforge and sells them in her own etsy shop we're very proud of her we are and when i convinced kim that we needed this glow forge i told her it would pay for itself he did but i didn't believe him it didn't just pay for itself it paid for itself ten times last year using the glue forge to sell our crafts we made sixty thousand three hundred thirty five dollars and forty three cents and we have made about fifty thousand friends that's how many subscribers we have on youtube and we very much appreciate you guys i love being able to make the crafts that i find fun and you guys being able to purchase those online and make them with us we now do our lives once a month and i love being able to craft with you and i love it when you share the products you've purchased and how you've made them and put your own design and spin on them i've seen some amazing things so if you are interested in the glow forge there is a coupon link where you can get up to 500 off and when you use our coupon link we get up to 500 back so everybody gets a little something and you get a great machine and we love building our own glowforge community we really do have so many folks that reach out ask questions comment to each other ask questions of each other it really is just like i said a large glowforge user group community all over social media including our pages i'm really surprised how helpful they are especially knowing that the internet can be mean so they are usually very helpful all right with that it's about time for us to head out so if you're not going to join us for the patron after show we will see you next week where we'll do it build it and make it again well actually we'll do it we'll make it because we didn't do build or make anything today yeah we just did a lot of talking about doing it and building it and making it i can't balance the glow forge but what if i can balance oh oh our fire extinguisher

Channel: Kim and Garrett make it

Views: 299,669

Keywords: DIY, Kim and Garrett, Kim and Garrett make it, Do it yourself, glowforge, glowforge pro, glowforge plus, basic, air filter, vent, is it worth it, cost, laser cutter, laser engraver, laser printer, exhaust port, glow forge, review, inline fan, truth, lasercut, referral, glowforge review, glowforge basic, best laser cutter, glowforge referral code, laser cutting, discount code, referral code, coupon code, laser tube, fan noise, glowforge review 2020, glowforge return on investment

Id: X7Jrfi5Jjuw

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021