Introducing Glowforge Premium user interface

Please reread my original post of this thread and subsequent posts. I am disgusted that a company like GF exists at all. They take advantage of the ignorance of the average hobbyist and then offer little to no support. They also promised that the software would be open source which it is not. I am not sure how you would conclude that I support GF.

BTW this thread was to point out that GF is changing into a pay for use service.

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I never really even looked at a Glowforge, so i thought I would browse their site. It is really funny to read their marketing. The machine is a toy. And it is CRAZY expensive. WOW.

Look at what $6,000 gets you :man_facepalming:

  • 11" x 19.5" cutting area
  • OMG… 2" of max material height (½" if you use the honeycomb tray)
  • 45 watt glass tube
  • “Sealed Optics” (whatever): with cleanable and replaceable windows

Bring another thousand if you want that 275 CFM air scrubber… :unicorn:

I guess someone out there is keeping them in business. $7,000 :pig:

I Never said you “supported GF” only said that you seem to be cheering because
I showed you resources that showed negative reviews which you down played my post by saying :

“ Very deep indeed! The Amazon reviews are far and few between and most people would never read a BBB review. Only 11 reviews in 5 years is not dramatic but most are from the last year. I have never seen a bad review from a reviewer.”

Please don’t be offended that I found the negative reviews you said did not exist.

I don’t want this to go sideways I respect all LightBurn users including you @HalfNormal. I apologize if you think I might have offended you it was never my intention at all.

Respectfully

Sasquatch

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@Stroonzo did you miss the built in camera option… :woozy_face:

Oh look at these, they’re like a glowforge but without handcuffs (and JUST AS EXPENSIVE)!

https://shop.dremel.com/laser-cutter/
https://digilab.dremel.com/products/lc40-laser-cutter

@Sasquatch No offense taken just confused with the statement “cheering”.

I stated bad press as in the people who review the equipment.
I was aware of the “minimal” bad reviews out there but you have to admit that they are far and few in-between and hard to find.

Anyway, no hard feelings. Always enjoy a good back and forth. You cannot learn anything unless you have a conversation that does not agree with everything you state. That would be just boring!

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I was not aware of Makeblock so I clicked the link
Beautiful website then a sales pop up showed in the lower right corner…

That should be the first clue of the type of customer service one should expect…CHINESE …I Laughed Out Loud :rofl:

Look at the screen grab below @Stroonzo

At the time those early reviews were posted Amazon was not and had never sold Glowforge lasers and I seem to recall that the earliest reviews were posted before the production units were actually shipping.

Dan, the CEO, had actually solicited early pre-production owners to write reviews on on May 28, 2017. This request was made on a private forum on their web site that was only available to the Glowforge faithful (the Glowforge VIP forum, which is not visible to the public). Worse, Dan later on commented publicly on how surprised and honored Glowforge was that so many owners had given the GF positive reviews there, as if he had no idea that was happening. This was one of the many aspects of the company that caused me to lose confidence in them and really soured me on Glowforge.

I canceled my Pro order shortly thereafter and ordered a Thunderlaser Nova 24 that has performed almost flawlessly for 2-1/2 years. The only downtime was caused by a $30 flow switch that failed in my CW-5000 chiller and that was replaced from China in less than 4 days.

IMHO, Glowforge is one sleazy company.

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image !

One reason for the lack of positive reviews may be that anyone with a Glowforge must realize that if the company folds their machine will become an unusable brick since it needs a GF server in the cloud to work, so owners have a vested interest in making sure the company remains solvent. Maybe the OpenForge guy can get an Open Source version without the GF cloud to work but progress there lately seems slow. I think that another reason for the positive reviews is that most owners have never been exposed to a laser before, have heard the horror stories about the K40 lasers and want something they can get to work without having to think too much. The Epilog/Universal/Trotec lasers are far too expensive for them and they are afraid to buy Chinese if they have to import lasers from China by themselves.

I think that the person you describe that is able of this thought process analysis of cause and effect is not one and the same as the stay at home mom that creates and sells jewelry or doll furniture on Etsy which seems to be the majority of their customers. If they were one and the same they would have come to the exact concourse the majority of peeps on this forum came to… GlowForge is just a plain bad expensive deal all the way through and through.

To be politically correct I will revise my statement to include stay at home dads.

Cheers

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GlowForge seems to be targeted at the same crowd as Cricut - new users, not too technical or experienced, looking for a solution that is “all in one” and holds your hand quite a bit. I have no problem with the existence of such a thing, it’s just not for me.

Both of these tools are relatively closed ecosystems - both push follow up services, pre-fab projects and clip art, materials, etc, and aren’t interested in letting other companies play. Again, nothing wrong with that model, but it’s limiting, and if the company doesn’t do a good job of it, or doesn’t last, you have a pretty paperweight.

The only difference is that they will not hold your hand , one needs to find other users that will hold their hand GlowForge customer service is nowhere to be found from what I have been able to research

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To be fair they are (eventually) responsive on their own forum, though only in the “Problems and Support” sub-section. Other forms of social media seem to be solely for the purpose of marketing.

They don’t even deserve that much compassion. Here is my point.

When one pays $5995 for a machine sold out of the US not China
One expects to get a little more one on one direct customer support. One that at least matches that of Cricut which is pretty much the same target market as the Glowforge.

Cricut $389
GlowForge $5,995

Who falls for the deep discount marketing ploy from $16,000 to $5,995?

Here is a posted Cricut contact sheet for Customer Service

Here is a photo of a GlowForge Sales Representative

Sorry no compassion for this money grabbing closed system anti creative user company.

Cheers

Sasquatch

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I hate it when they do this:
ice_screenshot_20200407-225510

artworks-000168408993-c34bxd-t500x500

Yes there is more…

Has anyone read their teems and conditions?

Here let me give you the juiciest part and subsections

2 User Content

    1. User Content Generally . Certain features of the Service may permit users to upload content to the Service, including messages, designs, specifications, reviews, photos, video, images, folders, data, text, and other types of works (“ User Content ”) and to publish User Content on the Service. You retain any copyright and other proprietary rights that you may hold in the User Content that you post to the Service, except as modified by your own action or actions to grant a license in accordance with Section 2.2.2, 2.2.3, or 2.3.
    1. Limited License Grant to Glowforge: Your Private Content. User Content uploaded to a private area of the Service (e.g., a design for use with your wireless hardware Product) shall be considered confidential and treated by Glowforge with the same care as its own confidential data. By uploading this User Content to a private area of the Service, you grant Glowforge a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid right and license to host, store, transfer, display, perform, reproduce, and modify, that User Content for the full period of time that you maintain your account on the Service, solely to enable your use of that User Content or to resolve any issues that may arise with the Service.

2.3. Limited License Grant to Glowforge: Content You Make Public. By submitting, posting, publishing, or sharing User Content to a public area of the Service (e.g. the Glowforge community forum), you grant Glowforge a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense) to host, store, transfer, display, perform, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display, and distribute your User Content, in whole or in part, in any media formats and through any media channels now known or later developed.

They can steal your content and profit from it and there is nothing you can do about it.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Yeah they are slime as slime can be.

Cheers

Sasquatch

To be fair most companies have very similar language when you post info on their site. Technically without that language the company would be in violation of your copyright just for backing up your data for safety.

But, on the dark side, a company with bad intentions would also have the right to flat out steal your work if they wanted to and you approved that limited license grant language.

For the record I don’t know for sure if GF has good or bad intentions.

But I do know they are selling a very limited $1,000 laser for almost $6k. Must be some really great marketing.

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By uploading this User Content to a private area of the Service, you grant Glowforge a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid right and license to host, store, transfer, display, perform, reproduce, and modify.

That wording Is very specific . I do agree that it would cover back-ups however if you dissect the above terminology you will come to the realization that it specifically address the act of misappropriation of user content without having to face financial liability while at the same time obtaining the rights to profit from ones work.

If they were worried about backing up personal data on their servers they would not use terms like

Royalty-free
Fully paid right and license
Reproduce
Modify

@Allen you have an honest heart and you are looking at this with an honest persons point of view.

I on the other hand worked in corporate America for over 30years before I semi retired as a contract compliance purchasing manager and let me tell you. I would NEVER agree with the above as a creator/artist currently.

GlowForge paid lawyers to write this one sided agreement. Nothing in there is written to benefit the end user.

Cheers :beer:

Sasquatch

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I agree. We don’t know. that’s why we should all say NO to terms and conditions written by 100 wealthy lawyers which none of us can reach. I lost my naivety at the age of 10.

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