I am not sure that Glowforge puts 90% of their software energy into the sales portal. I have been pleasantly surprised by the interface improvements over the 4+ years that I have had the machine. I can’t comment on the sales process as I have only purchased one machine one time and that was in the presale period in 2015. I certainly don’t know what Dan’s goal is for the Glowforge brand, but there are many more people that can use a Glowforge than will ever be able to accommodate a larger machine in their home workshop. I can’t imagine not having a laser, now that I have one, but for my purposes a bigger, more industrial machine is not something I want or need. The Glowforge was innovative and opened the laser cutting world to a new group of users. The product continues to improve, and I don’t know that it has to compete in the business laser market to be successful.
That’s the million (or more!) dollar question. Acquisition is expensive. Materials, the catalog, and premium are revenue lines but primarily for existing/current owners. Once an owner leaves the ecosystem that ongoing revenue is gone.
A long, long time ago, Dan did a survey on owner-intent, and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the number of people desiring to profit from their machines was much higher than they expected. I see a lot (or what feels like a lot) of voluntary attrition and people moving to systems that can get more done in a given amount of time.
I feel like the forums give a disproportionate view of owner intent since most people with a regular badge aren’t attempting to profit from the machines. There are certainly a number of people that now enjoy lasers as a hobby, but let’s be honest: this is a pretty expensive hobby for most people - that’s a pretty small demographic. Now, the demographic for people wanting a fairly low entry fee as means of producing side or primary income? That’s quite a bit bigger, and I think the survey results represented that.
I’ve been thinking of this, too. When my machine finally bites the dust, if I can afford to I will want to get another Glowforge just for its size and ease of use, if for nothing else. Like you, I have no need or desire to have anything larger and certainly nothing more complicated to use. I’m going to be 77 soon, so even though I still want a laser in my life I’ll be perfectly satisfied for it to be like the one I know and love, now.
LOLOL - are you seriously comparing a listing of patches and bug fixes on a piece of software to a listing of material improvements to the use of a laser - both hardware and software? If you want dates you go here: Announcements - Glowforge Owners Forum
the giant company that is Dremel seems to have removed all reference to lasers from their main site - and have even sold off their 3D printing, so no competition there.
OMTech which is absolutely trying to compete has a 50W laser for cheaper than the 
! Yeah - with a tube rated for a whopping 800 hours at high power (the tube - that part that took them a significant part of development to get “right”) - 2 years (or approx 10,000 hours) at 100%. Oh, and as far as I can see they don’t even have a “latest improvements”, at least not one I could easily find…so no.
To be clear, I think is far from “perfect” - but it’s a significantly better machine today than the one I was delivered in 2017 - and that’s not something I can say about any of the other devices I’ve owned.
That’s not exactly true. They claim 2 years of “normal use”. Who knows what that is? To get 10,000 hours over 2 years would require running it 14 hours a day every day over those years. That’s not “normal” in any scenario I’m aware of.
CO2 laser tubes are routinely advertised as 2 yrs or 2,000 hours. Very few actually fail to make that. It’s not uncommon to get 5 or more years and 10,000 hours out of them. Most people fall somewhere in between.
GF’s tube is a compressed design (the laser channels are manipulated to fit in a shorter tube). That’s where their engineering magic comes in, not power or lifespan.
Comparing its lifespan to another manufacturer at 100% isn’t really possible. CO2 tubes have a near linear lifespan curve until you hit 95ish% power and then it craters. Running a tube at 10% won’t yield more life than running at 90% but running at 100% can cut the tube’s life by 80%.
GF’s “full power” is almost certainly less than the tube’s rated max power. It’s likely a 48 or 50W rated tube that is advertised as 40 or 45W. In that approach GF is an outlier - most tubes are advertised at their rated max (or even more for overpowering which results in minutes or hour lifespans) and then recommend running at lower power levels. Many laser control software allow you to configure the machine not to exceed a certain power level regardless of what the user tells it for a specific project.
That OMTech 50W may be a conservative # so they don’t have to supply warranty replacements or much longer if you never run it at more than 45W.
for someone who’s looking to make a business, especially someone just winging it and not seriously making a business plan , getting loans, etc. (which anecdotally seems like a high %), GF is a gateway drug. if your business takes off, it won’t be able to keep up. hence people buying multiples or upgrading to something bigger once the business outgrows the machine.
OMTech would seem to disagree with you as they literally give hours depending on low/moderate/full power
Glowforge made a point that their tube was rated for use at 100% power the entire time (specifying that if you use full it would actually shorten the life). I honestly don’t remember where the 10k came from, but it certainly seems to be holding true.
100% agree that GF , specifically Dan, gets to define what “success” means to them.
Yes, I am comparing Glowforge to a software company. Other people compared them to Carbide3d so I didn’t explore that path. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call GF a cloud software company. I wonder what they say to investors ? bet it is not “a printer manufacturer”.
Yes, I reviewed the “latest announcements” and found that it did not provide the level of detail or transparency that could be called a version history. Mostly it talks about the latest items on sale. Nice info but I see no version numbers anywhere. It certainly does not provide a way to generate conformity for a manufacturing solution.
Would hate to see some upstart come along with a killer feature like a camera system with zero distortion and perfectly even lighting exposure , or an innovative exhaust system that provides a built in vacuum table (as members have demonstrated), or an inexpensive system with linear ball rails instead of the hated v-wheels, or… , or …
I just want to encourage the GF engineering team to be bolder.
They can disagree, but it’s physics and proven in the real world. Their marketing materials are just that. It gives them a reason not to have to provide warranty replacements. But at $150 for a tube it’s also likely they’re using lower grade tubes - doesn’t change the lifespan curve but may reduce the total expected life. They may be using old tubes - the life of a tube is primarily affected by use but they also leak (albeit very slowly) so if it’s sitting in a shelf for a few years it won’t last as long. You can get a discount on older tubes when buying from a closeout shop.
Their definition of 100% power. Just because they have 100 or Full Power in their settings doesn’t equate to 100% of the tube’s actual rated power. Their obfuscation of power (& speed) units renders any valid comparisons to other vendors nearly impossible. I expect that was deliberate.
A better comparison in the maker space came to mind : Cricut.
Here is the software update history : Release Notes – Help Center (cricut.com)
These guys are BUSY. Monthly updates showing meaningful and complex features being added regularly to their cloud based software.
Granted Cricut is a more mature company and their products don’t have the same safety issues as something like Glowforge. But they are BUSY and constantly releasing new models.
I don’t use Cameo products but imagine the same is available for their well regarded Studio software.
GF Engineering Team. We Love your work. Work Faster. Give us More to love.
*We have trusted you with a significant investment of money and time. *
I ahve the full business edition of the silhouette software.
I don’t know how often they update it, but it’s been the same looking interface for at least 3 years. I might remember one update, but that could be my imagination. If they have updated it, it’s going to be a log I need to search out rather than being somewhere easy for me to see.
I don’t really use it often, and it’s the most buggy out of all my software…for example…it randomly starts adding these logs until it takes up all the remaining hard disk space on my computer, causing all my programs to crash. They haven’t fixed that issue…it happens once every couple of months, for at least 2 years now.
The silhouette studio is a stand-alone software though, and doesn’t require any connection to the internet…maybe it’s when it does, that’s when I have problems?
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