OpenGlow Forum shutting down

The website that tried to reverse engineer the Glowforge and help out users after the warranty has expired is shutting down.

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A total of 100 posts on the site. Oddly it’s easier to import from not-discourse into discourse than from discourse into discourse. From his summary it isn’t clear that it would be worth the work to import here, since he’s saying that the hardware isn’t actually all that great once you do gain personal control over it. Not that I have any experience with Glowforge!

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They made a big deal that the software was going to be open source and that they would eventually give control to the users. They now charge a premium of up to $50 a month just to have a laser that is usable.

The machine is also not user serviceable. If you need service, you send it back spending $200 in shipping and pay whatever they deem necessary to fix the machine. If you did not save the monster shipping container, you’re also charged another $200 to have one.

A local museum that does education programs for kids chose the Dremel (similar price point to Glowforge) specifically because it did not depend on cloud software. I looked over it and thought the construction quality looked good for what I could see. DIY is way more interesting to me personally, but if I were helping someone to make a purchase decision whose personal purchase calculus was aligned with Glowforge, I would encourage them to include the Dremel in their evaluation.

I know that we have multiple forum participants who have said they are very happy with their Glowforge purchase, so it’s OK by me if different folks have different calculus. It’s all about what you want to make and what you want to pay and when you want to pay it.

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