Dear Glowforge,
What are you doing to secure proof grade stock for your customers? Were dying out here waiting for stock to purchase. you keep selling the glow forge but you don’t seem to be able to keep up with demand. kinda disappointing, like a lot!!!
You do know Glowforge staff do not monitor this forum, right?
There are many sources of material.
I have never purchased any Proofgrade material. It’s too expensive. As eflyguy stated, there are plenty of sources for good material. Everything I buy is already cut to fit inside a Glowforge.
I have purchased all of my wood from CraftColoset, and have been very satisfied. I earn points which gives me lots of free material as well. There are lots of other places as well. That’s just who I use.
As far as Cast acrylic, I buy most of mine from a place I found on Etsy, called MODFYBuild. I have been super happy with them as well.
Just google it and look for stuff that is laser ready. Lots of options on Etsy and even Amazon.
Mostly sitting on shelves in hundreds of Michaels stores, probably. Michaels does 40% off coupons on occasion, which makes it cheaper to buy in store than online during those sales. Go see if you can buy some locally.
I use Proofgrade on occasion as a convenience, but never rely on it. You can get laser-ready plywood/hardwood/acrylic at dozens and dozens of suppliers, and finish it with a clearcoat yourself in an afternoon if necessary.
Hey, welcome to the forum, sorry it’s not under more fun circumstances.
You might like this, particularly #1a:
i agree, glowforges proofgrade material is way to expensie. There are alot of good options just look in etsy. I quit buying their over priced stuff. If glowforge really cared about their customers they would monitor this site, but it shows how little they think of you after you bought your glowforge. The customer service is appaling. I have never seen a company sell a product and then run and hide after you purchase it. Had i know this i would have opted for another laser.
They’re not hiding. There’s a support link on every page of their site. Email/ticket based support is the norm for tech companies.
Not to get off track, but I think this is debatable.
If we make a few assumptions:
#1 dictates a lot of stuff. There are just limits to their resources.
Assuming #2, if it were my company I would be looking for largest bang for their buck in terms of social media. That means Instagram and Facebook, by a wide margin. This forum is great (I’m no fan of Facebook), but it’s not nearly as popular as either of those platforms. As much as it pains me to say it, this place is small potatoes if they’re trying to engage with the user base.
Assuming #3, customer support and service is expensive, and it’s hard to scale well. Glowforge made the right call by unifying all customer support pipelines into one single stream: support@glowforge.com. If we want the machine to stay affordable (which it is, compare it to others in its class) then we can’t be surprised or even upset when they make sound cost-cutting measures. Even if it’s frustrating, which it is.
Assuming #4: this is a solid bet. Hang around long enough and you’ll see that they are absolutely focused on monetization over innovation. This isn’t a good or bad thing exactly, but keeping it in mind does help set your expectations when dealing with them.
Assuming #5: It makes you wonder: why on earth would they allow deficiencies in their stock of proofgrade materials? Pretty clear that if it were at all in their control, they wouldn’t. If there was ready supply of PG materials from their vendors you bet they’d be selling them as quickly as they could. So, to me… being mad at them is an option, but I’m more sympathetic than angry.
TL:DR; If they could get more PG stock, they’d sell it to you. Monitoring this site is not a measure of how much they care about the customers, nor will it matter in real terms for customer experience. Any customer’s individual needs aren’t the issue here… they already know they’re sold out so griping about it won’t help much either. I’d suggest embracing non-PG materials and moving on to things you can control.
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