If you’re getting 2 of the same and the temp of the room isn’t an issue, I’d get 2 Basics. For a school setting, you’re likely not going to notice the boost in power. It’s going to be trivial. I don’t think you’ll find it worth the extra $3000 between the two units.
Ask anyone who owns a Basic if they feel like they are lacking in power and I bet almost all of them will say they aren’t. There may be a couple of people with very specific needs who notice, but I don’t think most of us feel it missing. It’s really the passthrough that’s a big difference. And maybe the cooling, although I have AC and don’t have an issue with that either.
If you don’t want to use Adobe for PDFs, PDF-XChange Editor is a full PDF editor/maker that is free. I love it so much that I paid for the full version that adds some extra abilities that are not widely needed.
I’ve read that the laser is the bottle neck for projects, so it seems like that 20% faster addition would be very helpful in a school space. For anyone who uses the Glowforge lasers in a group situation, what has been your experience? I know @brooklyntonia teaches art, maybe she will chime in? Also @josephtpage? I saw you mentioned classroom use in the Classroom user account suggestion thread ;p
Please tag anyone else that you know of that leads teaching or makerspace classes, I’d love to get their opinions!
at this point do you still make SVGs from Illustrator? the copy/paste seems to work without a hitch for me, so I don’t even bother creating the extra file.
i must have missed that. i never saw something saying they would prefer us to use SVGs over PDFs.
although, as i said above, at this point i don’t even bother with intermediary files any more. copy/paste is so much simpler.
I don’t know how the pro does with 1/4" plywood.
I can’t seem to cut through on my basic… not consistently, anyway.
I don’t even buy 1/4" ply any more. If I need 1/4", I cut two 1/8" and glue them together… sometimes hiding the seam inside the sandwich. It works for me.
I sometimes wonder if 5 more watts would break through… but really that’s the only place.
I would be unsurprised to learn that the pro is similar. I suspect that’s just too many layers of glue and naturally inconsistent birch fibers for a CO2 laser of this class.
None of that works in inkscape. I tried cutting and pasting the objects in the wondow into an open design in the UI, then to the UI home page, then tried copy and paste of the SVG itself to the UI home page, no dice.
one, you have to be at the home page of the GFUI (where all your designs are) and paste in there. if you’re in the working screen (where you see the bed), it doesn’t work there.
two, just like SVG, text all has to be converted to outlines. if it’s not, when you paste nothing will happen. no error message, just nothing.
yup, that’s the only negative. if you want unique names, you have to click the dropdown and rename. it’s a lot easier on your file folders to avoid that in between step.
although i will say it would be nice to be able to paste into a job on the bed screen the same way you can upload new art into a file.
Ha! Yeah, I definitely spend 80%+ time in design/reiteration, and very little in actually making (unfortunately). I should specify, “in group use”. Like 30 high school students ;p
I do wish my Basic engraved much faster, but can design away a majority of the need to engrave ;p
So, yes, if you were using the 20% for all of your projects, it would speed it up. But 1) the lasers use all the same settings until you’re on full power, 2) you’re not cutting at the full speed of the laser most of the time. It’s like saying that one car can go faster than another. You’re only going to see that when you are going really fast, not when you’re driving to and from work on the back roads.
As someone mentioned above, there are a few things you’ll cut more easily, but for school environments, this is trivial. All the Proofgrade items should cut just fine and there’s plenty you can do with 1/8" materials. It’s all I have been using anyway.
Here’s the deal. For $3K, you can buy a 3rd laser (and a ton of materials), which would REALLY speed up your process. The only reason I might recommend the Plus is the warranty, but still, for $3K you can afford to repair both lasers out of warranty. It’s a huge price difference. Someone just posted on FB yesterday that they wished they had saved the $1500 and bought a Basic.
I have no skin in this game, but I’ve got a lot of experience working in educational environments on tight budgets. I would buy the Basics and do something else with that money if possible. Or I’d buy the Pros for the passthrough.
It’s an amazing addition to the school no matter what the purchase is. Hope she comes on to share what the kids have been making!
Copying/pasting works with Affinity Designer, too, at least with the macOS version pasting into Safari.
But unless you’re careful with the settings the sizes can end up wrong.
If pasting into Safari, you need the DPI of the AD document set to 96 DPI and the “Copy as SVG” setting in AD’s preferences needs to be turned OFF. (If “Copy as SVG” is set then it acts a lot like Illustrator’s “responsive” setting and will be all wrong.)
I also tried it with Chrome but it never pastes at the right size with Chrome. It always comes in too small, regardless of DPI. (Unless “Copy as SVG” is set, in which case it will be HUGE.)