Why your Glowforge is faster, snappier, and boxier than ever before
We’ve got some exciting news to share. We’re shipping three fantastic new features - two new premium features, and one big performance boost for everyone. And we made it possible by changing the way our company works, to something that we think is going to work much better for you.
Your Glowforge Just Got Faster
Let’s start with the good stuff that affects everyone: we’ve made significant architectural improvements to our software that will make many software actions 20% to 100% faster. This applies to everyone, on all machines.
What does that mean in practice? Faster design loading. Faster passthrough actions. Faster processing times before your print starts. And this applies to everyone, whether or not you’re also getting Premium’s extra speed boost.
You don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to upgrade. Your Glowforge just got faster, starting today.
Introducing Box Builder
Here’s something we’ve wanted to do for years: make it easy for anyone to design in 3-D.
You know those websites where you plug in dimensions and material thickness and hope the generator spits out something useful? We decided to do something better.
Box Builder uses generative AI. You describe what you want in plain English - “a 4 inch square box with a sliding lid for pencils”. Or you give it a picture - like a photo of a wine bottle, and say “make a gift box for this". That’s all it takes for Box Builder to create the design. No complicated forms. No guessing at parameters. Just tell it what you want.
I used it last week to make a gift box for a very short friend’s 5th birthday party - he’s obsessed with bullet trains. I took a picture of the gift and asked for a sliding lid box that would fit. Box Builder generated it in seconds. I cut it out of Proofgrade light beech plywood, engraved a Magic Canvas shinkansen on the lid, and had a custom box that he loved as much as the gift inside (which was a pile of candy, so that’s saying a lot).
Box Builder is available to all Glowforge premium users right now!
The Return of Snapmark™
Some of you remember Snapmark. We released it as an experimental beta back in 2018, then stopped.
Well, now we can finish what we started.
For those who don’t know: Snapmark is a way to precisely align two prints. They could be two prints on your Glowforge, like a pencil jig you print once, that lets you engrave the infinite pencils perfectly. Or it could be a full color print on your inkjet aligned with cutouts on your Glowforge, so you can do precise popup cards.
Imagine “mini mass production” - engraving dozens of plaques at a time, each with different text. Instead of manually dragging each design into place, you print a template with Snapmark fiducials in the corners, load your cards in the jig, and the software automatically snaps everything into perfect alignment. Each item gets engraved precisely where it should be.
Or print custom iron-on designs on your inkjet printer, use Snapmark to cut them perfectly, and create professional-looking custom apparel.
Check out the community tutorial here.
And look at what people have used Snapmark to do!
Intricate kirigami patterns on cardstock - those elaborate papercuts with hundreds of precise score lines and cuts use Snapmark to align everything perfectly. Projects that used to take hours of hand-cutting with magnifying glasses suddenly became straightforward.
Multicolor hardwood jewelry creations combine desktop color printers with Glowforge Snapmark to create stunning designs.
Snapmark will be rolling out to all Premium subscribers who have Plus HD and Pro HD machines, starting next week and continuing over several weeks to follow. It will also appear on Basic, Plus, and Pro machines, but it may or may not work successfully, depending on when the machine was manufactured.
I’m so happy to finally bring this feature back!
How we made this happen
These three features are launching this week, and we’ve already got more in development. How are we shipping faster than we have in years?
It’s been a wild nine months. Glowforge went through a restructuring process, and Mark and I put in a bid from our own savings to acquire the assets of the business so we could keep serving you. Our team now wakes up every day with one goal: making your Glowforge better.
When we stripped the business back to its essentials, something remarkable happened. We could see more clearly what actually matters. We could take ideas we’ve had for years - like Box Builder and Snapmark - and actually ship them. We could make fundamental architectural improvements that make every Glowforge faster. And we can keep doing it.
This is a return to the vision Mark and I had when we founded Glowforge in 2015, but with a decade of experience and without the constraints that come with being a high-growth startup. We’re back to doing what we do best: building magical tools that help you create beautiful things.
And we’re just getting started.
–dan