My patience has finally paid off with the arrival of my new Glowforge today! The only person more excited might have been the UPS driver when he realized I was actually going to help him move it off of his truck!
The Glowforge was a bit of an impulse buy and when I got it, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with it. I don’t really have a background with things like this, so I’ve got a lot to learn! Fortunately so far the Glowforge is making this incredibly easy.
I’ve already created my ruler and that went very well. My first self-made project was to find a shark image, convert to vector and then try to make it. I didn’t pay too much attention in the UI before hitting print and honestly was very surprised and impressed when my shark suddenly had engraved teeth! I wasn’t expecting the engrave, though had I read what was on the screen I would have known. I just wanted to try to print it. The print was 3 parts, 2 engraves and 1 cut. I liked it a lot after the first engrave, less so after the 2nd. I pretty quickly figured out the web UI and eliminated the 2nd engrave and gave it another go. Much better.
After I was happy with that, I decided to try creating something with a real purpose. So my next print was a 100 yard MOA (Minute Of Angle) measuring device. I do some precision target shooting and thought this would be an easy way to measure my groups at the range. I also made two other ones for some friends, with their names on them as well.
Lastly, it was time to print out the escutcheon for my forge. It’s a pretty simple design, just some text and a couple free vectors that I threw together. For day 1, I’m pretty happy with it. Yes, my Glowforge is named “AK-Forgey7”. I like historic firearms and that’s what I came up with.
To @dan and everyone else at Glowforge, thank you so much for all the hard work you’ve put into this beautiful machine. I’ve got a long way to go on my design skills to fully be able to take advantage of it but I absolutely love this machine!