Glowforge Aura Laser Engraver and Cutter for Wood, Acrylic, Paper, etc., Perfect for Crafts and DIY Projects, Mac or PC Compatible

I bought this product a couple of months ago and wanted to put it through it's paces before writing a review. I have several years experience with laser cutters/engravers, and was upgrading from an older machine to something a bit newer/quicker, and perhaps a little more user friendly.I was immediately impressed by how well this laser worked right out of the box. Had everything set up and printed my first test project within a half hour. It's pretty slick, I think for a first-time laser purchase this thing is pretty much ideal. There are plenty of pre-made projects you can hop into straight away, and even more if you purchase the membership or are in the trial period. The membership wasn't for me in the long run, but it was great way to start off, and for people who don't want to get into the weeds with creating designs and cuts in other pieces of software and importing them into the Glowforge interface, I think it would be well worth the money. Like many users I tend to use GIMP & Inkscape to create my projects, but pretty much any graphics program such as photoshop should work, so long as you can export image files and SVG graphics. So don't let the membership aspect sway you away from this laser; if you feel like you have to pay a monthly fee to use it, you absolutely do not.I read some reviews talking about the speed of this laser, with some people expressing disappointment with it's speed. That all depends on your perspective. It's important to note that this is a diode laser, not a CO2. If you are wanting to go into large scale production you'll need to invest a lot more money on an expensive CO2 setup, but for the hobbyist or even a small Etsy store I think this laser will do the trick. Compared to my old diode laser, the Glowforge prints at least 6 times faster. Jobs that would take 3 hours to engrave can be done in less than 20 minutes, and the quality is just as good, maybe even a bit better. Cutting speeds are similarly faster. So for me, this thing has been a godsend.The software took a bit of getting used to, but again I was moving from an entirely different platform. I can safely say that compared to my earlier experiences with lasers the overall learning curve was much, much quicker. I was really impressed with the pre-sets. On my old unit I would waste an hour or more running test prints and grids to get satisfactory results, so I was a really amazed by how often my first print would turn out great without having to tweak any of the settings. The auto calibration and camera really work well on this unit. Initially I was a bit dismayed by the fact it had presets because I was so used to fine-tuning laser power and speed manually, but found that all of these functions are there if you really want to get that exact effect you're looking for.I'm pretty old-school, I like to back up my photographs to hard drives at my house and not store them on the cloud, so at first I wasn't wild about the platform being cloud based. But that's the way the world is moving, and I certainly haven't had any issues with this aspect, and in fact have fully embraced it.You can either buy Glowforge certified materials which will be automatically detected, but I have had excellent results by purchasing other non-certified materials as well. Just make sure to buy them from a decent supplier. For more advanced users, you can cut/engrave other materials as well (as long as they are diode laser compatible), but obviously you'll need to experiment a bit to get the settings rights. The Glowforge forum is a great place to go for advice or to see who has already done something similar so you'll have a good starting point. For me this is where a lot of the fun really comes in.In summary I'd say this is a great diode laser for both the novice and the experienced. The footprint is small, and it's a tidy device that looks great sitting in your craft room (or living room table).

I was so excited to buy this glow forge aura, I’ve been wanting one since 5 years ago but the pro was so expensive and when they came out with the more affordable aura, I went for it!! I should’ve done my due research:( the aura was amazingly slow. We made the test box they recommended and it took 5 min for it to cut typewriter paper, my son used it to cut leather and it took 5+ hours for a simple design. I tested what I wanted to etch for a cutting board on cardboard first and it took 3 hours to complete. When I did it on my cutting board it took 9.5 hours to etch, and the etching was uneven, and it left some letters incomplete!! I checked the lens to see if it needed cleaning, but the lens was still good. I tried to re-etch it again, but it wouldn’t etch it where it originally etched, so my good cutting board is ruined.Who has 9.5 hours of doing nothing to sit and watch the aura do its thing?!? You have to stay with it to make sure it doesn’t catch fire, plus you have to smell its fumes, it’s winter, the garage doors are open for air circulation and I was freezing. Eventually I went inside the house and checked it every 15-30 minutes. Totally disappointed when I checked it after 3 hours and it missed some parts of the letters.NO owner’s manual was provided (only a quick installation guide); everything about the glowforge aurora is trial and error, the company wants each user to ‘subscribe’ instead of allowing a household-account. This product is produced too quickly without any troubleshooting guide/owner’s manual; owners have to search on-line for any assistance/reviews from other owners.Note the partially-completed letters, inconsistent embossing, scorch marks…overall Cletus with his branding irons and soldering pen would have done a better job than glowforge. HUGELY DISAPPOINTED!If you want to buy a laser printer, maybe go with the glowforge pro, I read it’s faster and you can do more things with it, why waste your money and time for a slow inefficient machine. I ultimately decided to get the xTool D20, I read it was better, faster, similar in cost with the aura, better customer service and I did some actual research instead of blindly buying like I did. Also the YouTube and articles of aura vs. xTool was helpful too.I hope the xTool is better, it not, I’ll write a review on whether it is good or bad on that as well