I suppose Christian Reed would consider me a fool. I’ve got no CNC background, no fabrication or prototyping background, and no real design background.
I didn’t do much research before impulse buying on pre-order. We stole from our emergency savings.
Reed would have been more cautious and would wait to see the results after Glowforges ship.
I haven’t backed many crowd funds and I’m almost never an early adopter.
Over the past few months I have spent a lot of time on the forums, so I’m not quite as uninformed as I was. I’m still a newb.
He was putting out his review as fast as he could; and he was and is entitled to give out advice to err on the side of caution.
I’m delighted that I neither saw nor complied with his recommendation. I am happy to have paid $2000 to wait more than a year to get this 3D laser printer. The big six-month delay that has upset many backers actually alleviates some of the concerns that Reed outlines.
Thank you for your faith in us. We’re working hard to make the product you expect from us.
IDK, but my glowforge does not do what they promised. It can only handle a TINY svg file, it can only cut inside a 11x19 area, not 12 x 20, it’s making “broken” noises and wanting to be calibrated all the time, and now I see I can’t return it? I just went from cautiously optimistic to a disgruntled customer with a very expensive shiny paperweight.
If you didn’t buy yours from someone else and were a patient GF pre-order, then they would have told you that the current cutting size limit is 19.5x11" before you agreed to have them ship it now vs waiting until that was updated to the advertised 20.4"x11.5".
If you can’t do more than a tiny SVG then you should post to Problems & Support (or email Support directly) with normal or large ones as that seems to be an issue. Everyone else is having success with SVGs that result in projects as long as 3hrs + in execution length so more than tiny should be expected.
Posting it in Problems & Support and including the files you’re having issues with may actually be faster as there are lots of folks who will grab the file and see if it’s a file problem vs. a GF problem.
If by broken noises, you mean it goes to the side of the unit and then makes some horrible noises that sound like it is going to break the motors, this is changed today. As a side note, those are the stepper motors and they are driven magnetically so no damage was/is being done. If it is a different “broken” noise, please contact support.
Calibrating when the unit is turned on is normal. Calibrating more often than that does sometimes happen. Calibrating a lot has only happened to me twice and not at all in the past month and a half. They seem to have this under control now and I would report to support.
If a (properly working) glowforge is not right for you, a couple of people have sold theirs. Glowforge support appears to have been helpful in transferring ownership to the new buyers. FYI - if you do contact support, glowforge has stated to either email or post in Problems & Support. Doing both may cause delays in matching/combining tickets.
“were a patient GF pre-order, then they would have told you that the current cutting size limit is 19.5x11” before you agreed to have them ship it now vs waiting until that was updated to the advertised 20.4"x11.5".
Actually I just re-read all the info they sent and they did NOT say that anywhere… until I contacted support saying what is going on… and they said oops we are sorry we didn’t tell you that till now.
I was patient. Now I’m feeling like this thing is a just a diy toy. Why would you make something advertising everywhere that it has a 12 x 20 bed, when you never intended to even cut that size?
mine is doing exactly that… if you say it’s fixed, mine isn’t.
and it calibrates every time I touch it… ever time I move something in the bed to a different spot, every time i open and close… its annoying.
I did contact support. I just thought that after the 2 years of waiting I was going to get something comparable to my Universal laser… and it’s not. I was excited about this, but now I’m just left feeling incredibly disappointed.
When you filled out the web form with your address you should have had to click through a page that listed the state of various features (which parts are done, which parts aren’t ready yet) and one of the things on that page was an explanation of the current limits on the usable area of the bed.
Unfortunately there’s no way to get back to that page once you click past it, so a lot of people click past it without reading it, under the assumption that they can go back and look at it later, but you can’t. 
We are here to help. As James said, If you post a file you want to run here, we can look at it and help. I am interested in a file other than a small one that won’t run for you. Between the forum users and support, we can determine if there is a problem with your machine.
From the home page, the FAQ link has a ‘Tech Specs’ link on the sidebar that lists the bed size.
Sorry you experience thus far has been frustrating, but there are other users here who own other lasers, with Universal among them. From their experience, I would expect yours to be better than it has been.
If you can give us some more specific information, like a file that won’t run for you I’ll bet we can help!
If you go back and read what you agreed to when you told them to send it to you, you’d know that right now the effective cutting area is 19.5"x11". It also noted that they’re working on making the cut area larger - it’s a software constraint due to the need to accelerate & decelerate the motors. (It was smaller earlier this year and has already been expanded at least once.)
To characterize them as “never intending it to even cut that size” is unfair and uninformed.
They only announced it today, so maybe yours hasn’t received the sw update yet. All I know is mine stopped doing it. Considering yours is constantly calibrating, it’s probably best to wait for support.
They have shipped faulty units. They’ve shipped faulty units to some of the heaviest users of this forum. It sucks.
@jamesdhatch is also an owner of a Universal (or one of the expensive American made ones). He has certainly been converted to the glowforge. I’m not saying you’ll feel the same way he does, but once the issues are sorted, and the rocky start is in the past, maybe you’ll wind up liking it. If not, I don’t think you’ll be stuck with it. I sincerely believe you’ll be able to sell it without a serious, if any, loss beyond time and frustration. Sorry for your experience so far.
I don’t think it’s possible to go back and re-read it. It’s on the one page you can’t get back to once you’ve supplied your shipping information.
Also, they did change the cutting area from the original announcement and not everyone is as sick as some of us are in the regular reading of this site. That it would go unnoticed until you went to try and cut something 12x20 is hardly unreasonable.
Actually I’m a cheap chinese (K40) and a Redsail (60W, 18x24" bed, 9" of Z-axis travel and a PITA workflow). And the GF gets 95% of my attention and projects 
@smcgathyfay is the Universalist here - she’s got 2.
So, what I’m reading here is, if the working area of the bed is currently 19.5"x11"… then I’m pretty happy about the upgrades received since the earlier production units went out. It’s in the docs we agreed to, no surprises there! Most folks probably didnt screengrab each page though.
Oops
My Universals are work horses. They are industrial commercial machines and not a real fair comparison ( plus they are triple the cost minimum) …there is a nitch for the Glowforge in that mine dont have a camera or tracing feature. The gui is easy to use and is miles ahead on any of the “personal use” smaller machines out there. Customer service is amazing and they WILL take care of you.
It makes me sad that you feel that way. My experience is very different.
I don’t feel like the 0.5" x 1" that I’m not yet able to use is limiting me in any way. I do all my designs based on the space I have.
The noise on start-up does not bother me, since I know it’s “normal”. But I’m glad to hear it’s supposed to not do it anymore.
Mine only calibrates when I start it up, or when I open the lid before a job finishes. If I let the jobs complete, then the calibration is not re-required for me.
And I’ve been able to feed it some pretty complex SVGs. Some of them take a few minutes to open, but they eventually open. I’ve only had it choke on one SVG to date, and it had a ridiculous number of nodes. If you search on my username, you’ll see some of the stuff I posted, and some is pretty elaborate.
I hope you are able to get around your issues. I use mine on almost a daily basis, and I could not be happier with it. I hope you get to that point as well.
I was just talking about this with our engineering team as we had some unexpected calibrations today at CES. It’s a wifi signal quality problem - moving your wifi access point closer to your Glowforge will prevent this from happening.
Darn it! I was going to say that, because I thought I had detected a correlation, but I didn’t want to introduce wild speculation.