 This is our one year anniversary of Glowforge ownership and we'll show you what we think about it and how much we made right now. What is up? A welcome back. Do you like to do it builder or make it? So do we. And we have a new video each week. This week it's me and Lola Sparks one year anniversary. And I'm only a little bit jealous. Lola, that's what I named my Glowforge. Lola Sparks. That's her name. She lights up a room like a show girl when she walks in. Little bit. He does call her Lola. This machine has transformed our business. It actually turned our hobby into a business. This week we're going to show you what we learned after one year of Glowforge ownership. We were going to share a little bit of our likes and dislikes, what our challenges were, some accomplishments we've had. How much we made. I was going to say last but not least how much money we made over the past year. So what do we like about it? Number one is the size. It's 38 inches wide, 21 inches deep, nine inches tall, and it fits perfectly on our craft table. Yep. It fits perfectly in a craft space. It's convenient. All you need is a window or space to vent it. I don't really have any dislikes on the size. Number two, the cutting size. For the basic and the plus, the cutting size is 19.5 inches wide and 11.5 inches tall. But for the pro, this is what we have, it's 19.5 inches wide and infinity long. We enjoy the cutting size of the pro because it meets our needs. We cut a lot of 18 inch rounds for door hangers. What we dislike, it would be nice if it were 24 inches wide. I would like to make a 24 inch round, but it's only 19 and it still cuts those 18 inch rounds and that is the most common size and we'll cut all the letters that fit on it. Three, the laser power. The pro is 45 watts, which is plenty of power for us. We cut a lot of quarter inch MDF. Actually, we cut it like all day long and it cuts it fine and it meets our needs. Anything larger than a probably a quarter of an inch tall, you're going to need a more powerful laser. But like Garrett said, we do crafting type projects and so a quarter of an inch is perfect for our needs so no real dislikes there. Maybe it would be nice if it cut a half inch piece of plywood, but I've only needed that maybe once or twice. Three, materials. This cuts a wide range of materials and graves a wide range of materials and Glowforge sells a wide range of materials that are proof grade and ready to go in the laser. Yeah, the great thing about Glowforge materials is they are a consistent cut. They have very consistent materials and there's lots of different kinds, different types of wood, leather, acrylic. It's great that you can just go right back to Glowforge and order any other types of materials you want and they come with that QR code. So Glowforge app just reads the QR code and knows exactly what it is and sets those settings automatically. Those Glowforge materials do get a bit expensive and they're usually sold out. So you can go to your home improvement store and pick up materials. You'll just have to cut them down to fit and maybe the quality is not as good. The quality control is pretty good at Glowforge. Yeah, well they're not as consistent. Sometimes the MDF cuts and sometimes it doesn't. The lighter cuts better than the darker we found anyway, yeah. We also found that a lot of people sell Glowforge materials on Etsy and eBay. Five, exhaust. Now this thing is mostly self-contained except you do need to vent it out a window or put it in an air scrubber. The internal fan is loud. It is like a shop vac and you do have to be close to a window. The great thing though is it does have its own internal fan. You don't have to have something external but you do have to account for that noise or you can use an inline fan and add that to the back. You can get that on look at any of the Glowforge user groups. They'll show you lots of different models. You can get those on Amazon and that helps quiet it up a little bit. You can also add an air filter which will help reduce the noise and you won't have to vent it out the window. It'll be totally self-contained but the filter is expensive and the new cartridges are pretty costly also. And if you're cutting a material like MDF. The MDF has more glue and dust to it so you are going to clog up your filters quicker. So that is an expense to think about. We did use the filter but we went back to venting it out the window. 6. The design application. I like it because it's web based and you can use it from anywhere. It also uses the Glowforge servers for the processing power. You can upload your own SVGs and you can cut your files. You can even create SVGs and export them from the Glowforge app. But if you're doing any real detailed design work you're going to probably want to use a more sophisticated design tool like Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape or Silhouette Studio. The application does have some limitations like you can't do a lining or separating layers. It also accepts your typical file formats. It does scanning and the Glowforge artwork is immense. It goes on for days. There's everything. They even have some knock off Star Wars stuff in there. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of images in there. 7. Cutting, engraving and scoring. We learned a lot this year about layers and which should come first. Scoring, engraving and cutting. It's also capable of 3D engraving but we haven't tried that yet. And I don't really have any dislikes to add to that one. I think it does what we need to do. Score, cut and engrave. 8. The camera. This thing has a camera on the lid and I love it. It's great for lining up things and materials especially if you're trying to get something really detailed. It's also great because it does autofocus. You don't have to set the laser head distance from the material. Yes. It automatically detects if you're using quarter inch, eighth inch and it adjusts that laser height for you. You don't have to manually do that. That's another one of those auto features of this thing. The downside is the camera is in the middle of the lid so it is the most accurate in the center of your material and it gets less accurate as it moves outwards. 9. Learning and support. There is a ton of stuff out there about the Glowforge. There's a ton of places you can find information about settings, cleaning, I mean anything you want about it. There's YouTube channels, Facebook groups, Reddit communities, Glowforge groups. Glowforge has its own community and it is very active. I mean every time you're scrolling on any of your social media, any number of pages that you've liked will come across with so many tips and tricks. I have learned so much just flipping through social media and reading someone's post saying oh no, how do I? And then you think, yeah, how do I? I have learned so many things so the support community is just excellent. There's so many different resources out there. Do not be intimidated. You'll learn so much so fast. 10. Glowforge customer service. Now this might be our most controversial like and dislike. Yep, we hear a lot of horror stories about how horrible the customer service is but I put a GoPro in my Glowforge trying to get the best shot and really messed it up and broke one of the wheels on the gantry. I emailed Glowforge. No questions asked. They sent me two new wheels because it was still under warranty. Like I said, no questions asked. 11. She gets dirty especially if I'm cutting a lot of that quarter inch MDF. So you have to keep it clean. I learned that I do a two minute daily clean. I made a video over here and now I learned also that once a month I'll do a deep clean and clean the fan and everything. I also made a video where I do that over here. If you don't it gets very smoky and there can be flare ups and there might be a fire. My masking tape might have caught on fire before and we do keep a fire extinguisher, a can of fire extinguisher near the Glowforge just in case. 12. A comparison. We get a lot of questions about an X-Car versus the Glowforge. In all honesty we sold our X-Car because we found we really only used the Glowforge and we used the X-Car very little. The X-Car was great. We really liked the X-Car. It's a routing CNC machine where this is a laser, CO2 laser CNC machine. What we found is that we needed those more exact cuts and that's what the laser gives us. With the routing machine it does a great job at 3D engraving and it does a great job at cutting out thicker materials so we could cut half inch plywood. They weren't very precise cuts. The X-Car was great for cutting things that have less detail and for a quarter inch and above. The Glowforge is great for more detail and things that you'd be cutting for a quarter inch and below and since we're crafters and we did mainly quarter inch and eighth inch this suited our needs perfectly. And last but not least, like I said, it's really turned our hobby into a business and not only our hobby into a business but also our daughter's hobby. She now makes earrings and uses our Glowforge and sells them in her own Etsy shop. We're very proud of her. We are. And when I convinced Kim that we needed this Glowforge, I told her it would pay for itself. He did, but I didn't believe him. It didn't just pay for itself. It paid for itself 10 times. Last year, using the Glowforge to sell our crafts, we made $60,335.43. And we have made about 50,000 friends. That's how many subscribers we have on YouTube and we very much appreciate you guys. I love being able to make the crafts that I find fun and you guys being able to purchase those online and make them with us. We now do our lives once a month and I love being able to craft with you and I love it when you share the products you've purchased and how you've made them and put your own design and spin on them. I've seen some amazing things. So if you are interested in the Glowforge, there is a coupon link where you can get up to $500 off and when you use our coupon link, we get up to $500 back. So everybody gets a little something and you get a great machine. And we love building our own Glowforge community. We really do have so many folks that reach out, ask questions, comment to each other, ask questions of each other. It really is, just like I said, a large Glowforge user group community all over social media including our patrons. I'm really surprised how helpful they are, especially knowing that the Internet can be mean. So they are usually very helpful. All right, with that, it's about time for us to head out. So if you're not going to join us for the patron after show, we will see you next week where we'll do it, build it and make it again. Well actually, we'll do it, but we'll make it because we didn't do it, build it or make anything today. Yeah, we just did a lot of talking about doing it and building it and making it. I can't balance the Glowforge, but what if I can balance? Oh, oh, our fire extinguisher.