Glowforge Pro 3D CNC laser cutter and engraver Review

This is Glowforge Pro, a 3D CNC laser cutter/engraver that can cut through and engrave whatever you want into various types of materials. It’s popular in America since its inception in 2014 and is now available in the UK.
Info here: glowforge.com/our-products/pro
It’s not cheap to buy but offers industrial-grade performance for something you can fit in a garage or small space and use to create your own products and perhaps sell them on ETSY or use to quickly and efficiently make prototypes. It’s 3D because it can be used to laser cut items that can be assembled to make 3D products. It measures 96.5cm wide by 52.7cm deep by 21cm tall and weighs 25kg so for someone like me, I can easily pick it and place it where I want to.
The Glowforge Pro is one of the three variants available at just over £5000; there’s also the Plus and basic versions, with the Pro being the fastest with up to 3x engraving speeds. The product itself is super simple in design and setup process.
It looks like a big printer with a white plastic case, a glass top and lid and a button used to start printing on the front right corner. When you open it up, there’s a camera on the inside of the top lid which is used to help calibrate the printer head and help place your design on the web application. The built-in camera can also read your drawing or writing on paper, placing it in the bed of the device and having the camera on the lid
You’ll also notice the rail-mounted laser printer head and the black crumb tray which you can easily remove to get rid of collected pieces.
There's a front door that pulls down, and on the pro model like this one here, you also get a with passthrough slots front and back for large materials measuring 20 inches wide by a quarter of an inch thick, with no limit on length. You can print 10 inches at a time and then slide the material through the slot to process the next section, or you can use a make-shift item like these two rods here to allow a long material to easily feed through. All three models can take materials measuring up to 20.4 inches wide by 18 inches deep by 2 inches thick, with a maximum printable area of around 11in. by 19.5in.
At the back, you'll find the power input, on/off switch and exhaust connection port; here you can either connect your exhaust hose and point it out of the window, or you can also buy an optional air filter unit which means more space and also costs to replace its filters.
I think the Pro model comes with the official Proofgrade materials which come with a peel-off protective coating on both sides and a QR code. The code can be read using the built-in camera for the correct laser settings and if you decide to buy third party ones, you’d just need to check for compatibility and use the right settings.
The Glowforge Pro requires Wi-Fi to get it set up and to function, so no cables or proprietary software is needed, it’s a web app that can work from your smartphone or computer that can be Windows or Mac OS. Using the web app you can import bitmap (JPG, PNG) and vector files (SVG, PDF). Glowforge also offers a Premium subscription, which opens up a world of free and paid-for designs, or you can create your own projects from scratch using a variety of clip-art-style graphics, shapes and text in a range of fonts.
Glowforge Premium is currently on offer at £349 in the UK when billed every 18 months, although you could use Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator to create your own artwork.
The Glowforge Pro has a 45W laser power and can cut and engrave wood, fabric, leather, paper, acrylic, rubber, and more. You can engrave glass, coated metal, marble, anodised aluminium and titanium too.
It uses a CO2 laser tube, a type of gas laser operating at 10,600nm with the X/Y axis motors allowing the laser to engrave with 1,000dpi resolution. It can draw a line, at low power and engrave in multiple passes, and if you want different shades of darkness, it can vary the laser power between pixels. The laser can also cut material up to 1.2cm thick so don’t be trying to cut up metal.
What’s great about this machine, in general, is how easy it is to operate, I spent a couple of hours with it and I can use it, but it also depends on how complex you want to get, but there’s also a community of users who can always offer their experience with it too.
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Do the laser cut fast?