Received my Glowforge - timing, impression, and more

Everything Else
1

Early in December, I received the email that my GF was ready. I was out of town, and (based on the comments about delivery times being weeks after the email) I was worried about it being delivered at my shop when no one was there during the holiday. I accepted about a week after receiving it, and figured I’d schedule it with the UPS thing.

On the 18th, I got an email that the ProofGrade materials were shipping, to arrive on the 22nd. “Great!” I thought, “we’ll have materials to look at during the holidays when we can’t cut them,” since I wasn’t expecting the GF itself to ship until close to the New Year. So there I was at work on Friday the 22nd, and while catching up on my emails from the previous day, I saw that the GF had also shipped, on Thursday. “Wow!” I thought as I checked the tracking info. It was also supposed to arrive on the 22nd. I suddenly turned into a little kid, thinking “omigosh omigosh omigosh it’s coming!!!” and half an hour later, the UPS guy showed up. So I received it on the last possible day before Xmas!

My wife and I decided to sneak it into the house and not tell the kids (who have been waiting for the GF as eagerly as we have). I made some custom snowflakes with their names on them, and put those in a card with a note asking if they understood the significance of those snowflakes. The older one got it immediately, and we raced upstairs to my home office to see it.

I’ll post something about the first few things I made later, but here are a few things I noticed:

  • One of the plastic handles was missing from the box. :frowning:
  • When it’s running, the fan is louder than I was expecting!
  • My home office now has a near-constant smell of charred wood. :slight_smile:
  • The ProofGrade materials work so well! Having used a laser cutter at work many years ago, I know how annoying it can be to have to tweak settings. The GF, in contrast, just worked without having to tweak anything, which is awesome!

I don’t remember if it happened on the first day or not, but I have noticed in the last few days that when I turn the GF on, as it’s warming up it momentarily turns off all the lights and motors almost as if it lost power or tripped a breaker, but then it comes back in within a second or two. Is that normal?

We’re looking forward to making lots of fun things!

19 Likes
2

My Glowforge arrived last week and two of the plastic handles were missing and one broken

1 Like
3

I haven’t experienced anything like that in 8 months. To be safe, I would post in problems and support. Give the team the date, time and time zone so they can check the machine logs.

4

I’m leaning towards no. It does do its thing when you turn it on, but that is not how I would describe it. I would follow PrintToLaser’s advice with the added idea of taking a video for them. So much easier to troubleshoot when you can see what is happening.

2 Likes
5

OK, I posted over in the Problems and Support forum. I hope I don’t have to ship it back – this thing is a pain to move!

1 Like