Honest Glowforge User Review | What You Need to Know

today i'm going to be reviewing the glowforge laser cutter [Music] i have had the glowforge basic for a little bit over a year hi honey and i did a review when i was about six months in with my glowforge but now that i've had my glowforge laser cutter for a little bit over a year i just wanted to go ahead and do a more in-depth review because i've just learned a lot more about the machine and i have more to say [Music] first i just want to summarize my overall thoughts about the glow forge i'm going to start with the cons one being that it really is a loud machine which i guess is to be expected with a laser cutter and mainly i would say the filter is really loud it just has a loud fan noise my next con with the glow forge i would say is the software being web-based it does have its pros like if glowforge doesn't update to the software you're automatically updated and basically all your files live on the cloud which is nice but if your internet goes out you can't connect your glow forge and basically you can't work so i've had a couple of issues with that [Music] my next can is the glowforge basic does cut pretty slow but for someone like me i'm only cutting like three to four trays of earrings a week so it's not too big of a problem but i could see if you were trying to like use your machine all day and cut a lot of product it would be an issue so you would want to go with either the plus or the pro which is much faster than the basic all right now i want to talk about my favorite parts of the machine which definitely outweigh the cons so i have an etsy store and my own website where i sell hand-painted wooden earrings and basically ever since i've had my glowforge i've been able to make a lot more money i've been able to do custom orders which i couldn't do before i just love how easy it is for me to make new products now when before when i was outsourcing to a laser cutting company it would take me weeks to make a new product and now i can do it like within a few hours also i never really run out of stock of anything which is just super convenient if i see i'm running low on an earring i just make more so the glowforge is compatible with computers both pcs and macs it's also compatible with tablets and phones so if you wanted to send a design straight from your phone to your glowforge you could which is pretty cool so you're going to need wifi to connect the design software to the actual glowforge you need a minimum of 2.4 gigahertz but if you don't have that you can always upgrade your modem next is a difference between models so there's three models the basic the plus and the pro they all look the same on the outside the height of the machine is eight and a quarter inches the width of the entire machine is 38 inches and the depth is 20 and three quarters inches and the maximum material height that you can cut through is two inches the glowforge basic is the slowest but it's also the most affordable and the plus is twice as fast as the basic and it also has double the warranty so the pro is the most expensive and it's three times as fast as the go forge basic and it also has a built-in cooling feature which allows you to use it all day and there's also a pass-through slot which allows you to make things as long as you want which is pretty cool if you want to make big stuff the bed size for the basic and the plus is 19 and a half by 11 inches and if you're gonna go with the pro it's also 19.5 inches wide but then because of that pass-through slot you can make things as long as you want at the time of me making this video which is october of 2020 these are the prices for all three models the glowforge can cut score and engrave a few things that the glowforge can cut and engrave are wood leather acrylic food some examples of things that the glowforge can engrave but not cut are aluminum glass and marble i'm going to put a link in the description of all the things that the glowforge can cut and engrave when i first got my glowforge the initial setup only took me about 45 minutes it was actually a lot easier than i thought it was going to be and this is the table that i ended up getting i think it's a good idea to get a table before you get your glowforge so you have somewhere to put it and i really like this table i like the fact that it has wheels so in case i decide i want to move my glowforge i can and i also like that it has drawers so i can put some material in it [Music] so the filter is an optional thing to buy it is a thousand dollars but if you buy it you can put your glowforge wherever you want in your house and if you don't buy it you're gonna have to place your glowforge by a window just so you can vent out the window which isn't too big of a deal if you want to put it by a window anyway using a glowforge filter you want to make sure in the glowforge app that you have the glowforge air filter attached toggled on you also want to make sure you turn on the filter when you're running your glowforge and to do that you just hit the on switch when you start to notice a lot of smoke is filling up in your glowforge and you're starting to notice a stronger smell you want to turn the knob on the side closer to full if you have that knob turned all the way to full and there's a strong smell and there is smoke that's escaping from your glowforge that's going to mean that it's time to change your filter cartridge as i mentioned earlier the filter is pretty loud this is how it sounds the glow forge itself is also pretty loud but you can actually make the exhaust fans quieter by buying this external fan from amazon called the ac infinity there is a slight smell especially if you're cutting wood it kind of smells like a bonfire or if you're cutting acrylic that's definitely the worst smell that i've experienced [Music] the blueforce software is where you upload your designs to send them to the glowforge to cut you're just going to need internet access to be able to log into the software and you just go to app.glowforge.com to open that up software comes for free with your glowforge and there's no monthly fee or anything like that so goforge has a library of graphics that you can use or you can use your own design and that includes any fonts that you want artwork will have to be vectorized in order for the glowforge to cut and score it to do that you're going to have to use a vector program and what i use to vectorize my artwork is adobe illustrator or there's a bunch of other options like coral draw affinity designer and vector magic to name a few [Music] now i'm just going to do a quick tutorial to show you how i prepare a file for printing on my glowforge first i'm going to open up adobe illustrator and then i'm going to place this illustration of a cactus that i did on my ipad pro and now i'm tracing over it with the pen tool after i'm done tracing over the cactus i'm just going to make a copy of it and then reflect it to make two separate earrings okay so now i'm gonna go to the low forge software and to open that you just go to app.glowforge.com now to print that cactus design that we just created i'm going to go to create and then new blank design and then i'm going to click on the plus sign up here and then upload and then i'm going to grab that pdf and click open okay so once that is uploaded i'm just going to click and drag to highlight it and then i'm just going to drag it over here and i can see this is where i have the board inside the glowforge so the glowforge actually takes a picture of the bed and then it'll show you an updated picture of what you have in there so i want to tell the glow forge to cut these out so i'm going to go over here to like the layers panel and then click on the design right there and then i'm going to click on cut up here which is already selected and then under here i have all of my custom settings that i've already figured out so i'm just going to go to small cut and then after that you just want to select the material that you're using and now i'm ready to print so i'm just going to go over here to the top right corner and click on print okay so to print this design is just going to take 11 seconds [Music] the glowforg sells its own material called proof grade material and you'll actually get some when you buy your glowforge and the good thing about this material is that glowforge has already figured out the settings for you so you don't have to do any tinkering with that you can also use material that's not considered proof grade but the downfall of that is if anything happens to your machine while you're using non-proof grade material your warranty is void i actually use hard maple wood from inventibles.com because it's a lot more affordable than the glowforge would and also the glowforge doesn't seem to have any issues with it so i feel pretty safe using it [Music] you're not actually supposed to be looking at the laser when you're cutting something i guess it produces a light that we can't actually see that can damage our eyes so glowforge actually sells safety glasses and i would definitely recommend getting those also again just be careful of what materials you're cutting because some things like vinyl records can produce something called pvc which is deadly so if you're especially cutting something that's not proof grade i would do your research and make sure that it's safe before cutting it [Music] to clean your glowforge you'll need lens cleaning wipes a washcloth a spray bottle the lens removal tool that comes with your glowforge rubbing alcohol and canned air for cleaning instructions you can find them on support.glowforge.com and also there's a ton of videos on youtube of how to clean your glowforge glowforge actually recommends after 40 hours of printing to use those lens wipes to clean off the camera the lens and the windows [Music] glowforge actually does not have like a customer support phone number which i wish they did maybe sometime down the line they'll get one but they do have an email and you can email them if you have any questions and they usually get back to you pretty quickly glowforge also has an amazing community where if you post an issue that you're having there's a good chance that someone's going to respond to you like within the hour everyone's really helpful [Music] so everyone automatically gets a referral code when they purchase a glowforge and how it works is if someone purchases a glowforge with your referral code they get money off and then in return glowforge sends you either a glowforge gift card or cash whichever you pick speaking of referral codes i'm going to include mine in the description of this video so if you want to use it you can get a discount on your glowforge and then i will also get paid so it's a win-win i hope you liked this video i tried to include everything i could think of about the glowforge but i'm sure i forgot a bunch of stuff feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments of this video alright thanks guys bye [Music] you

Channel: Vic Tac Toe

Views: 7,866

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Id: Xqwlb--TPgU

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/whenthecatsareaway]

I don’t know why people are downvoting this- definitely appreciated the part of you going into Adobe illustrator- thanks for the video!

[u/Icannotfindnow]

I watched it and thought it was a good video for a noob like me to see what a glowforge can do and how she is using it to make money.