How I make $$ with Lasercut Products! All about the Glowforge.
I get asked a lot about the laser cutting side of my business and today I’m going to talk about how I lasercut my lettering with the Glowforge lasercutter!
So there are some things I absolutely love about the machine and then a few small things that are not so great, but I thought writing an honest review will help you decide if its the right thing for your business.
Let’s start with things I love:
It is VERY user friendly and easy to get started. This is a huge one. As someone who has designed for lasercutting in the past but never actually did the lasercutting myself, I was worried that there would be a huge learning curve. However, you can literally figure it out and start cutting within a few hours. They walk you through the whole setup process and then they have you do guided test cuts so you can get a feel for the machine and how it works.
You can cut/engrave a lot of materials! Acrylic, wood, leather, paper, etc. It is so nice to have one machine that can cut and engrave on materials that I use in my business everyday. I can actually cut my own acrylic place cards into any shape I want and that has been super important in the wedding world where names and guest counts are always changing and I can create exactly what I need at home, instead of having to order a minimum of 50 from another supplier.
The applications are endless. Like I said before, you can cut almost anything so the options for business and product expansion are honestly endless. I, of course, don’t have as much time as I’d like to actually devote to experimenting and creating. But still I’ve added a lot of products to my shop after getting the Glowforge that helped me pay it off in less than a year.
The Glowforge Community - There is a forum for glowforge owners and I swear any question you’ll have about the glowforge is answered there. I still look at often for problem solving and tweaking material settings, etc.
Okay so if you can’t already tell I love the glowforge and there are a LOT of things I love about it. However I want to be totally honest and there are two things that I do not love about it. They are definitely not deal breakers but definitely worth noting if you are thinking about taking the plunge.
Filtering your machine can be a pain. Okay so I bought the air filter that Glowforge sells and at first it worked perfectly, I couldn’t smell anything at all. However after about a month of cutting I started noticing the smell of the machine cutting more frequently. So after a lot of research on the forums and talking with Glowforge support, I learned that my filter already needed to be changed. Each new filter is $225 which is really expensive to have to change every few months. So while the filter might be good for someone who uses the machine infrequently, I don’t necessarily recommend it for someone who will be using it all the time. If you don’t buy the filter you need to make sure you have a window to vent it out of. This is what I’ve been doing ever since, but it is definitely a pain to set up when I’m just doing a small cut job.
Cutting Large Items. I bought the Glowforge Pro which among other things, allows you to cut items infinitely long as there are removable slots on either side of the machine. This was a huge plus for me, because I often need to cut longer name signs. However, when you use this feature you have to line everything up manually and there is a LOT of trial and error in the process. They released a beta version of an update that would automatically line up your large passthrough cuts, but I found this to still be very much a beta and it still didn’t really get me perfect cuts. Hopefully in the future they will make this better and then the Passthrough will be totally worth it!
So that’s it friends! It’s a GREAT machine and I would definitely recommend it to the lettering community.
If you’re thinking about purchasing one for yourself, you can get up to $500 off of your very own Glowforge by ordering through this link!
If you use that link to purchase, you will get a discount and I’ll get credits too!