Glowforge Is an Affordable Laser Cutter You Can Fit on Your Workbench

When you plunk material into the Glowforge, it carefully looks over ever slice and can adjust for irregularities and even modify designs to fit on subtle curves, eliminating the painstaking set-up you’d have to go through on more professional printers.

The Glowforge desktop printer uses a 3D laser for accurately burning off parts of a material to form the desired shape.

Glowforge is created to be the middle ground between the maker movement and industrial manufacturing.

Laser-powered cutting machines available before were usually designed for production lines or professionals who know what they’re doing.

Instead of layering, the method we mentioned earlier, Glowforge’s printer will use lasers and basically cut out designs based on whatever you have input into the software.

Shapiro envisions the sorts of things Glowforge can make as a good fit for outlets like Etsy, eBay and the local farmer’s market.

“The Glowforge turns everyone into a micro-manufacturer”. It’s confusingly described but actually cuts into and reduces material to make objects from plastic, leather and the like, whereas a 3D printer adds on and builds up material objects.

With Wi-Fi connectivity and one-button printing, you can create 20 chocolate rockets just in time for your kids’ birthday party, without the mess that comes with baking. For those interested, there’s also a Glowforge catalog which lets you buy and print default designs. For example you could place a piece of wood in Glowforge and have it cut out a design that you have specified. The machine cuts down to reveal the pattern and the user then pulls the pattern out and assembles the object when done.

According to the details shared by Glowforge, the new 3D laser printer makes use of subtractive technology for achieving the proper depth and precision.

“This isn’t a gadget that appeals to people because it’s interesting; it’s a tool that’s interesting because it’s useful”, said Shaprio. The device is priced at $1,995 during a 30-day preorder period beginning September 24, after which it will retail for $3,995.

You can pre-order Glowforge on the company’s website.