This post is for the people that skim the forum but haven’t posted anything yet. Hi! Welcome! Introduce yourselves and don’t be so shy. I hope you find useful information in this community, and maybe some new friends! What are you going to do with your Glowforge?
I’ll start;
Hi, I am Jeremiah. I live in Northern California, collect old bicycles and tinker with aircooled Volkswagens. Im a 3D Animator working in video games. While waiting for the Glowforge, I am learning 3D printing and strengthening my 3D modeling skills.
I ordered a Glowforge to be able to supplement my income, develop better cosplay props, and to burn things.
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Be sure to head on over to the map thread after you check in here:
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Hi my name is nick.
(hello nick)
I am a forum skimmer. I have been skimming for almost 2 years now. its had its ups and downs, but im glad im still here. 
But for real, its a good place. best forum ive seen in a long long time.
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Hello Nick!
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Hey Jeremiah! I’ve literally been reading every new post (not so good at going back to posts after I’ve already viewed them), thirsting for every little consumable tidbit about the Glowforge I can find, but tend to only comment here or there. I’m a graphic designer with ZERO lasering experience so I don’t really feel like I could add to most of the discussions & I don’t even know what I don’t know to ask questions yet.
I know once I get one I’ll definitely be way more active as I begin tinkering. I bought a Glowforge because I know how to use Illustrator inside & out so I know I could easily design stuff with it—I’ve always thought a 3D printer was cool but not as practical & kept thinking if there was something like this that manipulates materials that already exist I’d be in Heaven.
Worked on any video games we might be familiar with?
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Hey jamingaroutte!
I have never used a laser either, so just bookmarking cool tutorials and techniques. It is great to have this forum, everyone is really helpful, even for people just starting out.
I have backed the “Olo 3D Printer” and the comment section on the Kickstarter page is terrible. Everyone is mad, and the company does a lousy job with answering questions/ concerns.
I have worked on a bunch of terrible games! 
Some are cool though, I guess you can figure out which is which. Conan (xbox, ps3), Playstation Move Heroes, Zombie Apocalypse, Resistance: Burning Skies, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, Bolt, Knack, Drawn to Death, Puppeteer, WWE 2K15,16,17.
It would be cool to see some of your graphic design stuff!
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Hey folks!
I’ve posted once or twice before, but never introduced myself. I’m Sergio, I live in the UK, and I got hooked on laser cutters because of the nice CO2 laser cutter we have access to at work (80W, I believe).
I’ve used it to make some nice Christmas presents, as well as some wall art for the bedroom. Here’s a picture of the latter:
Can’t take credit for the artwork; that’s a nice image I bought online and adapted to laser cutting 
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Hi Sergio!
Really nice art work. Hope to hear more from you in the future.
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I like the branch transition from negative to positive space.
What is the material?
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Hi Sergio! Nice wall art! I am trying to figure out how that is made… Is the white space just cut out from the black? If so, then what about the moon shape? Is that a white piece embedded in the black?
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Thanks for the kind words, everyone! 
The material is plain old acrylic. A single sheet of black, actually! I adjusted the cuts so that there was enough material to hold the overhanging bits, like the one that goes over the moon. Acrylic is quite strong, so you don’t really need much of a ‘bridge’. The whole thing came out perfectly, as a single piece.
Since I didn’t want it to break on the way home, I then simply glued it onto a sheet of white acrylic with some super glue. Job done! 
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The Glowforge takes care of the lasering, I’m finding. What takes the most time for me is the designing part of things. For a long time I was breaking nodes and joining nodes to bring two things together in a design. I finally started using Boolean operations in Inkscape and that has made a world of different as to speed, for example, in joining letters together to make a stable outline for initials.
@jules is working on a design tips topic and I want to do a live stream of working with designs to prep them for printing. You have a great start on all this.
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Incredibly important to understand how they work, especially when the end design is going to a cnc of some kind, as opposed to screen or print.
For adobe users, these would be the tools in the “pathfinder” window in Illustrator.
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Good tips! In the spirit of the topic, could you introduce yourself to everyone?
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Yes. That’s the point isn’t it. 
I’ve been on this train since September 27 when I paid for my Glowforge basic. I live in Missouri and am pastor medium size church at the Lake of the Ozarks. I taught school, esp. technology for many years.
I have a Glowforge basic in my basement now. Somehow I got chosen for the pre-release model. Trying to balance my work duties, personal priorities, forum participation, 15 minutes of fame and cranking out stuff on the Glowforge has been quite an adventure.
I can only say that if you have never had anything to do with machines like this or designing things, the Glowforge will allow you to quickly create meaningful and useful items immediately. It’s been a long wait, but for the discount I got in the beginning, and the great community on the forum, and knowledge that the Glowforge is a very special machine, the wait has been and will continue to be worth it.
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I’ve been watching your posts/updates/videos like a HAWK! Thank you for sharing and documenting so much… You’ve been so helpful and dare I say—inspiring—I’m definitely planning on sharing some design tutorials that are geared towards GF users once mine gets here… Guess I could start a few of them in the coming months if I get the time, but as I said—I don’t know what I don’t know yet in regards to the specifics of lasering things. I’m still almost certain I’ll end up melting my face off from using some horrible material—Probably not the kind of tutorial people around here are looking for.
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Thanks for the clarification! He said “Boolean operations” and I blanked because I’m used to seeing the “Pathfinder palette” in Illustrator—it is a game changer!
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