The “premium” included for a year must have been developed by a team of 6th graders. I would NOT recommend.
I have read is so many other forums where people have wasted thousands of dollars in materials trying to get their stuff to work.
Literally, GLOWFORGE spends zero money in their technology software…there is a group trying to bring a Class Action Lawsuit against them…I joined. It’s pathetic!
A Polarid photo captures better pics than their crappy camera on the machine.
Welcome to the forum, a shame that you’re unhappy with the pro.
So I’m not sure why you posted this here. In case you don’t know, Glowforge staff doesn’t officially read the forum, so if you’re trying to get their attention it’s better to email support@glowforge.com. In the end you’re just talking to existing Glowforge owners when you post here, we’re probably not your target audience.
I’d imagine that you’re not going to stick around; you seem pretty unhappy. If you do stick around I think you’ll find that the best secret feature of the Glowforge is the community of users. We’re all pretty friendly and helpful, and we’ve all managed to make some pretty cool stuff – even with the limitations of the premium software and the blurriness of the lid camera.
If you take off and don’t come around, good luck with whatever action you take. Like you, I’m no fan of the premium software – I simply don’t need 95% of what it does – but I know that for many users it has opened a lot of doors to creating projects that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to try. In that way, I think it’s really successful.
As for spending zero money on their software, you might be surprised at all the details that have gone into the actual lasering part. They’ve made the whole process of cutting and engraving very smooth and easy to use, and there are lots of little tricks they do to get such good results, like tuned acceleration routines to prevent overburn on corners and clever grouping features to engrave multiple vector shapes in single passes. It’s a pretty polished experience overall.
Anyway, best of luck to you.
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Welcome to the forum. I see that you have spent 4 minutes reading here.
This community has been active for over 7 years and is composed of individuals that own a Glowforge. You probably aren’t going to change anyone’s opinion and I am not sure that you intend to make a positive impact on the discussion.
Here are the forum rules in case you missed them on the way in: FAQ - Glowforge Owners Forum
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Very happy with my Pro. Worked like a charm for years until the tube started to fail (expected) although I can bump up power or slow it down to compensate.
Passthrough is a very handy feature, and the reason I bought the Pro in the first place. Never “wasted” any materials. Pretty much constant software improvements over the years and nothing to install locally adds even more value.
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I love my pro. Even in some of the challenges I had early on, I have found solutions here in this community.
When I recommend a 
to people. I focus in on what they want to do. isn’t for everyone. But I can relate to what @evansd2 said. It gave me both the experience and confidence to make some really cool stuff!
I am sorry your experience has not been better. Perhaps you can find the support and empathy here to get past the challenges your facing.
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Some of us here spend a lot of time in those other forums trying (fruitlessly) to convince people to 1. Read the documentation, 2. Work through the tutorials on the support site, and 3. Come here to the forum and look at the thousands of tips and solutions and all the excellent advice that’s been gathered over the years, not to mention the font of knowledge the experienced users represent and are more than willing to share. 95% of the posts I see out there of people “wasting materials” would have easily been avoided if they had just done the first two things. 
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Ouch. They are in the slow learners group I guess.
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Yeah. You’d think they’d be smart enough to stop after, say, the first $100. But then again, if they’re not smart enough to stop until they hit $1000s in wasted materials, that probably explains why they’re having so many failures. They’re also not smart enough to run the laser cutter successfully.
I got my non-Pro about 5 years ago towards the end of the Kickstarter. The machine has yet to let me down. In fact, I’ve found that it does a pretty good job with a wide range of settings on materials that aren’t Proofgrade. I’ve had very few failures on non-Proofgrade. And it just works with Proofgrade, no mystery at all.
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Hey if he thinks it’s so bad I will give 500 bucks plus shipping
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If one has a market like a gift shop, premium can be amazing. The first month it was out looked hard to justify, but even then one could just grab any of the " free with premium" designs and usually have a retail product they can sell in the store at a fairly good profit. More recently with the AI making images, and the many design assistances, and the explosion of the number of “free with premium” designs has made it ever more the case. Even producing a design with someone’s name, the built in text system allows you to change the name with every instance of the design right in the GFUI.
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I have a bunch of 6 graders who would love the opportunity to have a Glowforge. If you hate it that much I will take it as a donation. 
You would be making a few children very happy.
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Looks like drive-by poop-slinging. They haven’t been back. 
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very difficult to fix stupid. Ignorance can be worked through.
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I would reply and give you my experiances, I love my Pro and have actually had very few problems with it. The community is great and willing to go the extra mile to help if you do have a problem, but I think Thumper369 pretty much said it all, and better than I could, so I think I will leave it to him. Good Luck!
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501!!
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