Over the past 5 years, I’ve had 4 GF machines with 2 pros and 2 basics. But unfortunately, my GF basic has died and the only solution that GF has offered me is to ship it to Wiregrass because I live in Canada. I suspect the tube is dead but there’s no way of replacing it myself.
I’ve built a decent business with my GF machines and I did like the fact that I could pay a discounted price for refurbished machines back then but now, once my GF is done, there’s no way of getting anything for it. I have accepted my GF basic is dead.
My GF pro has slowly reached its age where the pass through no longer works with its camera. The only solution that support can offer me is to take pictures of this and that which I know will not do anything. Frankly, I probably know more about my GF than the support does. How many of the supports actually have, used, tinkered 4 machines in the past 5 years? Now, there’s no way of getting any more new GF machines.
The GF pros are exorbitant in price. With the immense selection out there, I’ve purchased a OMTech for the fraction of the cost with larger print space. Yes, you will need to learn how to use lightburn, but the learning isn’t as bad now with the abundance of resources out there. Perhaps, 5 years ago, GF was the machine because it was incredibly user friendly. It was something people have never seen before, but if I can get multiple machines for the price of one GF, why not? The Atomstack Hurricane seems to be up and coming machine which I will most likely try and if I wanted something cheap, the Gweike Cloud will do its trick to.
So long GF. It’s been a great ride. There’s no way I can afford a new machine and there’s no way of keeping me part of the GF family as my machines are becoming to be obsolete.
The point of this is that over the 5 years, GF has not done much to improve their machine while increasing their prices. Their customer support has also gone down as well.
I’ve been committed to GF and have done a lot with it. I just wish GF did more to evolve their machines especially when there are so many other options now.
Many original GF backers are finding the same sentiments. That is why i posted this because I care about GF but now it’s no longer feasible.
I believe GF has moved away from the needs/desires of their founding customers. They’ve embraced the lower skilled home crafter market vs folks interested in developing technical and design chops. More of a spit out canned laser crafts to sell on Etsy/craft fairs market now. They no longer need rely on making us happy.
For a while, they were refining the technical aspects of the machine until it was good enough. During that time they just happened to be aligned with technical users, but they were never core to their business model. They always wanted to put a laser in everyone’s house, and that means you have to design for the least technical among us.
I mean, just think back to their launch videos, of cutting chocolate in your kitchen. Talk about literal vaporware, that was never going to fly – a Glowforge even at rest is so smelly that no one will ever want one in a kitchen. Setting that particular fantasy aside, you can tell by the tone they were striking that they always wanted the crafter market. This makes sense, there are a lot of creative-but-not-too-technical people out there.
And that’s not even getting into the failed attempt to go public. The run-up to that completely altered their focus, making them increasingly desperate for recurring revenue. Now that an IPO seems to be off the table, I’m not sure what they’re up to at this point. They don’t seem to be in a growth mindset, they definitely don’t seem to be innovating, they’re not even trying to match features in other lasers in the space.
What’s next? Who knows, I’m not even certain that they do. In the meantime, my laser is performing well and I am enjoying being creative.
You are absolutely right here. They want it to be a beginner machine that anyone can just buy a template and cut. What they aren’t realizing is that the laser market is becoming incredibly saturated that people aren’t buying your cutting board engraved logo or text Or things that you see on Etsy. These ‘businesses’ don’t sustain because there’s not enough customers. What they should have done is to make a new machine that helps the technical real makers in accessible the machines true potential.
The fact that there’s a race to the bottom on selling goods on Etsy is not glowforge’s problem. It’ll only be a problem when the perception by the average wannabe Etsy/craft show seller shifts to “lasers can’t make money”, and I don’t see any signs of that happening.
If they make the interface significantly more complex and capable it’ll be less accessible to a wide swath of users, it’ll also incur ongoing support, maintenance, and documentation costs. This is exactly why the average “competition” to Glowforge tells people to use lightburn: the laser company sidesteps the whole issue.
Glowforge’s strength is their vertical integration. It also inherently slows and shapes their update cycles.
This isn’t to say that they aren’t making new features, it’s just that their features tend to be “how can we sell subscriptions” more than “how can we make glowforges better, more capable, or innovative?”
If only someone had predicted this… In early 2020 when Glowforge introduced subscriptions I said:
[now that there’s a subscription] Glowforge is incentivized to keep making the subscription features more and more appealing which will eventually make it de facto mandatory anyway.
It’s a shame. They had such a lead and let it wither.
Since I developed a more flexible way to use the passthrough before GF came out with their system, I have never used their system beyond just trying it out. I do break my design into 2 or more parts before loading but that gives me control of where those breaks are. As long as each part is less than 11" tall I can usually make the breaks where the lines are near vertical so a millimeter off still works. Where the cut is near horizontal I dont break at all. Usually those break points are not at the same Y point as is required by the built in system so for that a millimeter (or a lot less) off sticks out badly.
You can thank the last election (or not) for the threat of a huge tarriff on Mexico. About any buisness that had stuff done in Mexico will be moving it back to the US. It is that moving that means such repairs are not happening until there is another place to do that set up and running. After that happens I expect refurbs will be available again though for more money.
The reason I bought in was the ability to use it without having to have the ability to build my own. So in that way, they prioritized the nontechnical user. There was still the need to have skills in image manipulation, but there was minimal expectation for folks to do electronic repairs. At one point you get to a logic point. If X is done for you, you will not be able to do it yourself. I have the other side of that argument sitting as decoration as a big 3D printer that is a table decoration that I need help to do the first thing with.
Oh, and on that tariff stuff? Everything coming out of China is going to have big issues as well.
Blanket tarriffs across the board are going to cause more harm than good. You can’t just relocate massive manufacturing capabilities back here when there isn’t a workforce capable of sustaining them. Unemployment is bad but they aren’t all living in a central location looking for mundane low-paying jobs. There are exceptions but the overall effect is going to likely put smaller businesses under.
GF’s shift was most likely to simply stay competitive in the game, not to make dramatically higher profits.
We’ve raised a couple of generations of people who have been programmed to believe the only way to be successful is to work in an office with a degree behind you.
there’s been a bit of a change to start pushing people toward non-desk jobs, but they’re not the mundane, low-paying ones. more like the trade skills jobs (see mike rowe works foundation). but US workers don’t want to be doing the rote assembly line junk for low pay.
Being in Canada, there’s no way I can have my machine repaired. The refurbished option was the only option of having a machine back up and running. Unlike right now, my broken basic sits in my garage and my soon to be broken GF pro (camera doesn’t take pictures any more), is soon to be obsolete as well.
I am also able to do that as well but it’s just easier if the GF pro just scans it. It is a really slow process but it’s better than cutting it and taking screenshots of where it left off. Maybe i’ll just cut it manually from the get go to save time like what you are doing.
On another note, OMTech also sucks as well. I bought one and then the machine broke after 3 months.
There is no CO2 laser of any brand that can manage a Canadian winter below freezing. Trotec operates out of Canada so perhaps they could be of more help.