"You deserve the best."

Original email from Glowforge Pro crowdfunding: “you get Founder status.”

Then, after waiting three years and no less than 13 slipping delays, over half of which I wasn’t even notified, for the product to finally arrive – not only is that status nowhere to be seen, but today when I tried flipping a design horizontally – as I’ve always done in the UI – I get “You deserve the best” and Glowforge again tries to force me to a subscription, which I will never pay for. This feature was removed and has always been there. I paid for my Glowforge Pro already. Put that feature back. This cloud lock-in is very annoying. I need to flip my designs. All the “free” designs and all that I do not want, and if you keep adding features I’ll miss out from, that is fine too. But now, it becomes more and more clear what you are supposed to do is to purchase expensive Proofgrade materials and anything which isn’t, is sent to the “Beyond the Manual” section, under the defense “Because Lawyers.”, which is plain FUD.

The Creative Tools in the interface have only been available to us since sometime after April of this year…Dan discussed the new Premium program and that he was going to let us all test it for free while they developed it in the April 2020 Update…

Introducing Glowforge Print and Glowforge Premium

Introducing Glowforge Print and Glowforge Premium

We designed your Glowforge so that we can continue to make it better, months and years after your first Gift of Good Measure. We’ve already improved your camera’s accuracy, sped up your prints, improved your wifi connection, and much more. Today we want to give this living and breathing service a name: Glowforge Print. As an owner of a Glowforge Basic, Plus, or Pro, you have a free, lifetime membership to Glowforge Print. Best of all, Glowforge Print will keep getting better with new features - with a bunch of them rolling out today.

At the same time, we’ve started work on a new membership tier: Glowforge Premium. Glowforge Premium will offer a whole set of new features. These features cost more to develop and operate, so we’re building them as part of a new membership product.

We were planning on launching Glowforge Premium many months from now. It’s not ready yet. But we find ourselves using it constantly, now that we’re all stuck at home. It makes it so fast and easy to create meaningful designs, we didn’t want to make you wait for it.

So even though it’s still very early, we’re going to launch Glowforge Premium now, as a free trial, so you can use it to start creating things at home. We don’t have pricing or a launch date yet, but we will let you know how much it will cost at least a month before the free trial ends.

In short, Glowforge Print is everything you know and love about your Glowforge, for free, forever. Glowforge Premium will introduce some exciting new features, and you’ll be able to get a free sneak peek of it starting now.

…and as I recall, that flip function was a couple of months later, but don’t remember exactly when they released it for testing.

But that’s not important really, if you want to keep using that flip feature, it does require a subscription to Premium. BUT…They are currently offering a 50% off Black Friday sale on the Premium subscription that locks your price in at $24.99 for as long as the subscription is active. That discount expires on December 31st, so you still have a little time if you decide you want it.

The discount code appears in the November 2020 announcement:

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Yeah, flipping designs was never part of the basic interface. Sorry. :frowning:

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Thank you @haakonstorm for the feedback, which I will share with the team, and thank you @Jules for the clarification that the flip capabilities were released as part of Glowforge Premium.

Regarding materials, you can use any material you like as long as it’s compatible with a CO2 laser. Options include many types of wood, leather, cloth, paper, stone, glass, and much more! If you need assistance with settings for those materials, “Beyond the Manual” is the best place for that discussion.

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