Glowforge - Consumer Laser Cutter

[Glowforge][1] has released their product for preorder and announced pricing today. For the first month, it’s half-off MSRP, which means:

Basic $2000 (I think it’s in USD)
Pro $2500
Pro w/ Air Filter $3000

This pricing is good for 30 days, after which it’ll presumably cost twice as much. I have an additional $100 discount which is good until midnight Sept 25 (tomorrow), in case that’s useful to anyone. I’d love to have my own, but life’s not stable enough right now for me to justify buying one.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this product because it’s the first consumer-oriented laser cutter I’ve seen, so presumably it should be designed not to harm itself or the user if the user does something wrong (unlike many industrial laser cutters). It also has neat features, like dual cameras that use computer vision to determine where the material is, and even, to some extent, what the material is, apparently. It supports pretty much all the file formats.

They claim in the FAQ that the HEPA/Charcoal air filter allows one to use the laser cutter indoors without ducting, but without, you’ll have to run a duct out through a window.

Everything else is pretty standard and info can be found easily on their site.
[1]: http://www.glowforge.com/

Holy crap. I’d love to see someone actually drop their MacBook in there to get engraved.

The dual cameras, aside from showing you in software the material overlaid with your cutting plan, also autofocus the head! Also, they say “The lens moves as the laser travels, so you can cut & engrave materials that are curved, uneven, or irregular. Glowforge’s dual cameras measure the thickness of the material to a precision of four one thousandths of an inch.” Waaaannntttt

I just tweeted at them to see if they’ll do a demo at VHS.

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Giving this serious consideration. Anyone want to weigh in on why this is a
horrible idea?

I signed up - My referral link for $100 off (for referer and referee) is

The only real downside I see right now is that its cloud based. Which means
that you’re SOL if the company goes under. But then you can always hack the
laser and drive it using more traditional software.

@dhylands is the controller software cloud based, or just the catalog? It’s interesting that you can sell designs directly through their catalog.

UGH WHY

Just give me some a USB connection and a driver that turns svg into whatever their printer expects.

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You PERSONALLY have 24/7 access to a 80W (1000mm x 1000mm) laser cutter right now. You can use it any-time you want with one very importation exception (you can’t laser nude)… I am willing to pay a few hundred for the ability to laser in my birthday suit but not a few thousand.

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My understanding is that there is a low level controller with the device,
but your user interface to interact with your device is cloud based. So I
think that the cloud service creates whatever equivalent to gcode that they
use, and sends it to the device to “image”.

Where did you come across this information? I had difficulty finding much information at all about the product before their announcement today.

I saw a link to this video today (I don’t recall exactly where)

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More comments can be found here

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interesting…

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Prices would appear to be higher than you listed. 4500 for pro w/ filter? Am i looking in the wrong place?

That video is great. Seems like a few steps forward.
I dont know anything about laser cutters, this seems good. Goodbye v1.0 of laser cutters, I feel.

I dont get how the created some of those large 3D Lampshades.

cut out cardboard in layers ( with a hole in the middle ), then glue all the layers together.

Not sure where you’re seeing that $4500 price. Maybe that’s after tax and shipping? I also don’t know if it’s USD but I am assuming it is because America is the center of the world.

its under the tech-specs page