Latest Improvements

Live chat support is being beta tested at https://support.glowforge.com/.

The live chat beta provides customer service and technical support from 10 am to 2 pm Pacific time Monday through Friday.

When chat is available, you’ll see a chat button at the lower right corner.

If no one is available, you can click the support button to leave us a message and we’ll reply by email.

New in Early Access for Glowforge Premium: Printscan™ beta

Designs that concentrate lots of laser energy in a tiny space can lead to charring, discoloration, and material damage. That can leave you with a mess instead of the project you wanted.

To help combat this, we’re releasing a beta of Printscan. Printscan beta estimates if your print will experience material damage due to the concentration of laser energy. If Printscan concludes that there’s a high risk of material damage, it will give you a warning.

Make Puzzles with Premium

The Puzzle Maker makes it easy to create a puzzle for a gift or a pastime with a few clicks. From your workspace, select your art. This will show the Puzzle Maker button in the toolbar.

New Premium Plan - Annual

Customers have asked us to offer an annual option for Glowforge Premium, and we decided to do it with the biggest discount since we launched- 60% off.

If you’re not currently subscribed, click on the Upgrade badge at the top of your Dashboard, and choose the Annual plan.

New Firmware

The firmware on your Glowforge will update automatically some time during the next several weeks when you first power it up. This update doesn’t change anything now, but will help us prepare for future improvements.

We’re talking about the latest improvements on the Community Forum.

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made some improvements to how setup works on mobile devices. We’ve adjusted our Wi-Fi setup to make it more mobile friendly.

We think this will make things easier for first-time Glowforge users, but also for existing folks who, for example, want to change Wi-Fi networks. We hope you find it helpful!

By popular demand, we’ve gathered together our most sought-after help content and added them to the app Dashboard this week. You can more easily get to tutorials, read about the latest improvements (like this), and find useful manuals for your reference. Glowforge Pro users will also see tutorials for using Pro Passthrough and the Glowforge Pro Laser Safety Officer training manual.

This week we are also adding a shortcut to the shortcut - you can now hit “Cmd” and “/” on Mac, or “Control” and “/” on Windows to bring up a handy cheat sheet to see all the shortcuts right from within the app.

Make Stamps with Glowforge Premium The Stamp Maker makes it easy to turn your artwork into a stamp in one click. Select your art and you’ll see the Stamp Maker button in the toolbar.

Click “Create stamp” to make a stamp based on your design.

We recommend that you use thick acrylic to print out your stamp. Create your own custom logo stamp for your mail, or emboss it on your next leather project. There is also a Stamp Handle in the catalog that makes it easy to bring your stamp to the world!

New Proofgrade Setting We’re adding a new setting, SD Deep Engrave, for Thick Acrylic. This new setting will be available for vector and bitmap engraves.

We recommend using SD Deep Engrave for the best results on your stamps.

DXF File Support: Part of Glowforge Premium, but free for you We’re excited to announce beta support for DXF files in the Glowforge app!

To import your DXF file, click “Create” on the dashboard and select “Upload from file”, or drag and drop into the dashboard or workspace directly.

We originally planned for DXF support in 2015, then announced it was cancelled in 2017 when we found the cost in developer-hours was too high to support it compared to the small number of professional users who needed it. Now, with the Glowforge Premium program, we’re able to invest in adding DXF capabilities.

And we're delighted to share some great news: given the history of the DXF work, we’re going to include it for you and all existing Glowforge customers as of January 30th, for free. It will be Glowforge Premium-only for users who purchase later.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you’ll bring to life!

We’re talking about the latest improvements on the Community Forum

New catalog designs We’ve added 4 new catalog designs this week with more ways to create breathtaking displays! Serve up your delicious treats with this 3-Tier Mobile Dessert Tower or Crescent Mini Display Riser. For those looking to create more space in your kitchen or office, this Mini Shelf Riser Display is perfect for organizing your spice jars or collectibles.

Catalog designs now show instructions automatically Thanks to your feedback, we’re making improvements so it’s easier than ever to print and assemble a design from the Glowforge catalog. Most of our catalog designs have detailed and helpful instructions - now, when you open one for printing, those instructions are shown automatically.

Should you make changes that you want to revert, you can click Reset Design. This will reset your design to it’s catalog-original condition.

We are also adding more assembly instructions for some of your favorite designs.

Improved sensor monitoring Your Glowforge uses sensors inside the air intake, lid, head, exhaust, and coolant to alert you when the temperature gets too high. We improved the way we monitor these sensors to more quickly and accurately identify issues.

Autofocus improvements We’ve made some updates to the autofocus software to improve the accuracy.

Glowforge Premium now has Early Access, which lets you try beta features out. These are features we think might be useful to release, so we’re sharing them for beta testing. Your feedback (in the forum) will help us decide whether we should release them for everyone or remove them.

Early Access already has something in beta for you to try!

Design Search - Design Search lets you search the titles of your designs to quickly find the one you’re looking for. From the Dashboard, click View All to see the search box.

We have another improvement to Glowforge Print to share: More settings details for design export. Previously when you exported, you would get the step number, operation, and setting names.

With the latest improvement, now you’ll also get detailed settings saved to your exported file for manual and custom steps.

This will be available for all Glowforge users, free, as an easy way to preserve each manual print setting on export so they can be referenced and re-entered if you want to reuse the settings in the future.

We’re talking about the latest improvements on the Community Forum.

Past Prints: now, every version of your design is preserved (Premium only)
Three weeks ago we announced Glowforge Premium and some of the new features that were on the docket. This week, we’re launching Past Prints. This feature is like Apple’s Time Machine for your designs, and will save a new version of your design each time you print.

With Past Prints, you will be able to see your print history going back to Sept 15, 2020. We’ll preserve all your files and versions forever with your Premium subscription. Now you can experiment with settings and changes without worrying about losing your work!

New vector engrave settings
We’re updating the SD Graphic settings for Draftboard, Plywood, Hardwood, and Acrylic. The new settings are for vector engraves only; bitmap engrave settings will stay the same.

New catalog designs
You’ll see your home in a different light this week with 2 incredible new designs, created by a talented Glowforge owner just like you. Choose subtle sophistication with this elegant Acrylic Barrel Light or make a centerpiece statement with this Angular Wood Shell Lamp. Or print them both!

We're talking about this now on our Community Forum.

Glowforge Premium: Share Premium with people in your Household

As a paying Premium member, you are able to use the power of Premium while you are connected to any machine. We want you to be able to share premium with anyone in your household who shares your Glowforge. That means you’ll be able to add up to 2 other Household Members to use some of your Premium goodies! They’ll have these benefits while they share your machine.

Anyone who shares your Premium subscription will be treated as a trusted member of your household and will receive access to many of your Premium subscription benefits.

Improved Proofgrade settings Based on your feedback, we’re updating the HD Graphic settings for Proofgrade Walnut Hardwood to produce more detailed bitmap engraves.

The new HD Graphic setting will replace the existing settings. The existing setting will be there for at least a week, and labeled with “(Expiring Soon)”. That way, if you’re in the middle of a project and want to preserve the settings you’re using for later, you can open up the HD Graphic engrave settings and click the “+” sign to save them as a custom setting.

We’ve also added Proofgrade Aspen Hardwood to the material selection list in the app.

We're talking about this now on our Community Forum.