Am I the only person who has murderous thoughts (1st degree, special circumstances) about the person who designed the GF head belt and it’s re-attachment procedure?
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You may not be alone, but I never felt it was an issue as I never found any practical reason to remove the belt in the five years (?) I owned my first glowforge. Nor have I on the second. I did detach it once just to see what all the fuss was about, and still didn’t understand why people were having such an issue.
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Even having not taken mine apart over all these years I can see it is not really that bad. I think an appropriate sentence for having such thoughts is to have to work on something truely heinous. 
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Unsympathetically I’m going to echo the “I’ve never found it that hard”.
If you’re really fighting, likely you’re trying to muscle it on there which will never work. If you push up while moving the belt towards the side you’re pushing on, it’ll pop right on.
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The belt is easy. Dealing with the black cable that sticks forever to anything it touches and will be destroyed to get it loose can be a bit trickey.
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Well, forum consensus is that I’m just incompetent. I guess my homicidal tendencies are not GF-specific.
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Time to find a cheaper target for those tendencies! 
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I think that’s a bit harsh - you’re just pole-vaulting over an ant hill.
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Yeah I wouldn’t say anyone is incompetent here. Everyone has different ways of thinking and doing things, maybe your approach and mental processes just don’t align with whatever the Glowforge designers were thinking when they made it.
It could be something as simple as it was designed to be easy for a right-handed person to do it but a lefty has a tough time. It’s really difficult to design something that works well for everybody … To me Glowforge is full of these compromises, especially in the user interface.
I try to approach these things with empathy for the designers and for other users that may think differently from how I do. I remind myself that while I may feel that some part of the design, process, or interface works really well, it may be a usability nightmare for someone else.
All I’m saying is that your opinion is valid here. If you have a problem with the way it was designed, then that means that there’s a problem with the way it was designed. If you can give specific feedback about what’s difficult maybe people can tell you about their workarounds or you can provide valuable feedback so Glowforge can improve in the future.
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It’s pretty similar to replacing most any belt; not the easiest task, but doable. The trick is to get it started and then rotate it into place while not letting it come back off. The LAST thing I’d do, though, is to give in to the Facebook solution of loosening the pulley, because then you’re just asking to have tension problems for the rest of forever!
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