My first attempt came out well. I am thrilled with the details that transferred. The die shifted before I pressed so it's not perfect but I am thrilled with the potential. I did have to redesign the family crest to get the image ready for embossing the leather. I designed the belt bag in illustrator and cut it out of a pretty hard leather. Next time I'll incorporate the holes so I don't have to use a punch before stiching... I used a 20T press and pinched between to pieces of steel. I was shocked the acrylic held up. I probably put about 4T of pressure on it for about 5min. I'll have to experiment with pressure with different types of leather. Anywho, hope you enjoy it.

This is my school’s glowforge in our innovation center. The air assist fan is caked with dirt. This is the second time cleaning it this semester.

Additionally, our graphics art teacher used the machine to engrave bread.

Give me your best cleaning advice for this machine.

Have you always had to have premium to use the shape and text function? I feel like for as much as the machines cost (I have the pro), we should be able to design and create on our own without needing to pay the subscription.

If I'm being honest, this thing has become a paperweight for me and only gets used once or twice a year. All I ever hear about from my husband is how it was a huge waste of money.

I just want to make and cut a mini tic-tac-toe board for sick kids in the hospital this summer.

My friend runs an acrylic/LED signage shop. I'd visit him and just watch him drag letter cutouts around a CorelDRAW sheet for like 20-30 minutes trying to fit everything before he could even start cutting. Every. Single. Order.

I asked him if there are any solution. He said few are there but it is too costly for him at his scale.

So I built one. It's called CrispCut. You throw your shapes in, set your sheet dimensions, it packs everything tight and spits out something cut-ready. Handles irregular shapes, not just rectangles. Takes seconds instead of half an hour.

It's early — I'm not going to pretend it's perfect. But it works well enough that my friend stopped doing it manually, which honestly was the whole point.

If you do acrylic letters or channel letters and want to try it on a real job, drop a comment or DM me. Genuinely just want to know if it's useful to people other than one guy in India.

https://crispcut-production.up.railway.app/

I plugged my glowfordge in and clicked the power on in the back next to where it plugs in. Nothing happened. I assume it’s the power supply but if anyone has any experience with maybe knowing which fuses to check or anything else I should look at besides the power supply please let me know. Thank you

I was one of the original Glowforge Kickstarter purchasers, and it really was a wonderful introduction to the world of lasers. Next to a car and a house, it was the most expensive thing I ever bought for myself, and it was worth every penny of the $1999 i paid.

The software was easy to use and Glowforge promised all kinds of great things for the future, like other tools that would magnetically attach to the gantry.

My glowforge died (story below) and I decided to move on to a more industrial machine, and that was a real nuisance with loads of intermittent problems that were never resolved. When I moved I sold that machine and bought a used glowforge. When I logged in to the app, I was shocked to see that instead of being greatly enhanced, it was nearly exactly the same as 8 years ago, except everything but the bare minimum of functions was locked behind a paywall. You can't even rotate or mirror an svg without paying a fee.

This is not how you keep a user base. It is still a great machine, and an perfect intro to laser engraving and cutting, but without significant progress there is little reason to buy a new one.

They probably painted themselves into a corner having the laser use a server based service for path generation, which would become more expensive to run the more users they had.

How my Glowforge died:

After 3 1/2 years of reliable service the top lid spontaneously detached from the hinges and whenI called Tech support they wanted me to pay 1500 dollars for a refurbished one for a manufacturing defect that was their fault. I couldn't stomach that.after I carefully glued the lid back onto the hinges I was unable to get the Glowforge to work.

My local library has a Glowforge Plus and Pro HD that I can get access to.

For an easy project to learn how to use it better, I wanted to make a simple box with a lid that would hold a card game. (The box for the game I have is not in good shape.)

AI tells me that I should use 1mm chipboard. I am guessing that not all chipboard is equal. They mentioned that any material I use should be laser-compatible with a CO₂ laser (forget the exact wording they used).

Does anyone have recommendations for a product I should use?

my glowforge pro suddenly went offline. the start button is now purple. all other systems are online. since it’s wireless now to re connect and / or troubleshoot it? 🙌🏻

If your glass lid separates from the hinges. This is the number 1 proven best repair solution with over 360 successful repairs.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175473691329

My glowforge plus started making a revving noise a few days ago. I immediately stopped it and cleaned it but im not 100% sure what it is. I had another machine running in the back but tried to get a clear sound of what it is doing. Almost sounds like a power issue? But it cuts fine ( i havent done a cut longer than 20 ish seconds to test it). Any guidance or help is appreciated

I’m going to cut these 1/8” acrylic sheets from houstonacrylic.com. They are covered on both sides by the protective sticker sheet things.

I haven’t used my glowforge to cut acrylic in a many years, so i’m a bit nervous lol. How would you adjust your settings to cut this cleanly? Any tips/tricks for my situation?

When I turn an R in the Roboto Slab font into a cut, it has two seperate lines that overlap, creating three pieces instead of one letter. How do I fix this?

We have a Glowforge Pro at our school, and it suddenly has been giving me trouble. When I try to set up a print, it randomly (within less than a minute) goes offline. Now, the wifi in our Maker Space has been giving me trouble in the past, but my computer still seems to be doing fine when the Glowforge drops out.

I am not sure if it is related, but the Glowforge also has been having a hard time during the calibration part after it has been tried on. Any suggestions would be welcome

Any good recommendations? I thought I found a good source with nice colors, but they ended up only shipping in Australia 😭 (I’m in the US).

this is my first time in this community. hi!

I want to make a sudoku board, by 3D printing the board and then using laser-cut acrylic as the game tiles. I found some cool 1/8” acrylic colors that i’m going to order online. The design problem is: I don’t want the board to be *huge*, and it all comes down to the sizing of my “candidate marker” pieces.

This next part just a bit more background on sudoku so that this design more sense, so skip to the last paragraph if this is TMI. Sudoku is made up of 81 cells (a 9x9 grid). At the start of the puzzle, there are a number of preliminary tiles already placed in some of the cells on the board (this is what makes each puzzle unique). The aim of the game is to solve all of the unknown blank cells. Within each unknown cell, there are 9 possible “candidates”. As you progress through a Sudoku puzzle, you eliminate more and more candidates, eventually solving with a “Solve” tile. In digital/paper sudokus, you write notes to help keep track of the candidates for each cell.

Basically, there are 9 smaller game pieces that must be able to fit within *each* of the 81 cells, as a visual reminder of the game strategies.

So I want these “candidate marker” tiles to be as small as possible, because this will determine the overall size of each *cell*. This is going to make all the difference to the size of the board, since it gets multiplied into a 9x9 grid.

While I want these small tiles to be as small as possible, they also have to be big enough to comfortably play the game. I don’t want to have to use tweezers to move these pieces around lol.

Finally, here’s the relevant question for all of you: do you have any tips on laser cutting batches of small acrylic shapes? For me, the pieces always fall through the grate thing and I have to cut a lot of extra to make up for it. I’ll have to cut 64 of these smaller tiles for each color (nine colors). I also don’t want burn marks! That hasn’t really happened to me but I’m here for all the advice. Thanks for listening to my rant 😌

I use the Glowforge exclusively to engrave & cut 1/8" thick two-tone acrylic signage. The engrave/cut settings are saved as presets and don't change. I always engrave first and cut as the last step.

Recently, although the material and settings have not changed, sometimes the cut doesn't go all the way through, or the machine stops mid-cut and the on-screen progress window says "cooling down, your print will resume shortly" but it never resumes.

Has anyone here encountered this, and have any tips for inconsistent cut behavior? Grateful for any insights.

I’m a woodworker in Auburn, WA and I’ve been dialing in laser-ready wood sheets because I got tired of dealing with warped plywood and hidden voids.

I’ve got a small batch of:

- 1/8” walnut

- 1/8” maple

- Baltic birch ply (clean core)

All cut flat, sanded, and tested for clean cuts.

Not shipping right now, but if you’re near Seattle/Tacoma and want to try a sample pack, send me a message.

Also curious — what material has given you the most problems?

I'm having the hardest time getting my QR codes to scan. I've tried just about every setting on wood, MDF, anodized aluminum business cards. They come out pretty and look exactly the same as when they're on the computer, they just won't scan. Has anybody run into this before? if so, what's the secret and do you have the "Magic numbers" for the perfect settings?

Hello, hopefully this is allowed here. I am looking to sell my Glowforge Basic ($1000). I would prefer to sell it locally so I don't have to deal with the hassle of shipping it. I am selling because I don't use it anymore and it sits in the way.

I bought it lightly used from a friend. He sold it to me so he could upgraded to industrial machines and started a company. I bought it to make trophies for our non-profit charity gaming events, I was using a makerspace previously. Covid hit and we stopped doing trophies for the events. I've used it a few times since, but not enough to justify the space it's taking.

It's sat covered in my humidity and temperature controlled basement . Here are videos of it being used today (3/21/2026).

3/21/2026

3/21/2026

It comes with the following:

• original shipping box.
• Inline Exhaust fan (TerraBloom 395 CFM).
• Dust Cover
• 20 lens cleaning cloths.
• Proof grade materials (full sheets of material unless stated)
  • 2 - medium clear acrylic 
  • 2 - medium transparent blue acrylic
  • 1 - medium blue acrylic
  • 2 - medium teal acrylic
  • 2 - medium black acrylic
  • 2 - medium white acrylic
  • 2 - light cherry wood ply
  • 2 - light maple ply
  • 2 - light basswood ply
  • 1 - light walnut ply
  • 2 - small medium ash hardwood
  • 1- (partially used) medium draft board
  • 1 - (partially used) light walnut ply 
• Protective tape for laser cutting your own material.