Makerspace Manual

The Jax Makerspace's Glowforge Pro can cut and etch designs onto a variety of materials. A user may upload their design to the Glowforge web app, 

The Glowforge is considered a Class 1 Laser and a class 4 if the passthrough is open. Class 4 can be dangerous if operated improperly. Consequently. an employee who has undergone training and are authorized by the Laser Safety Officer must be present. The authorized employees are...

• Tom Schilb (Laser Safety Officer)
• Greg Garcia

The "Cut" option is disabled

The Glowforge can engrave using a variety of image file types but can only cut in designs saved as BMP (Bitmap) or SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). If you are having trouble changing the settings from engrave to cut, check the file format of the design.

If the portion of material you'd like to cut / engrave on is not visible within the Web App, you can refocus the camera.

Error: Head not found

Turn off the Glowforge and clean the camera lens.

Engraved image is faint

If the engraved image is too faint, the image itself may be too light. Try converting it to black-and-white using Adobe  Photoshop or Illustrator.

File > New Project > Make sure there is only 1 artboard (default) > Drag and drop image onto canvas and press "Enter" > Image Trace > Black and White Logo > Expand > Ungroup > Delete white parts > Change "Fill to None" and Stroke to "red" (Doesn't have to be red but that's the standard color to indicate "cutting") > Export as SVG

• When engraving an image onto an object, the color of the image will affect how dark the engraving is. For example, a bright red image will show up light on leather while a black image will appear much darker. It is recommended you convert the image to black-and-white before printing.

The Glowforge can cut and engrave a large variety of materials however; Glowforge officially only supports their expensive "certified" materials which we rarely use. Here are some materials we've successfully cut / engraved and the settings we used.

Baltic Birth Plywood (12" x 12" x 1/8")

• Used the default "Medium Basswood Plywood" setting

Chalkboard

• Used the Medium Bass Plywood setting

2-Sided Chipboard / News Mounting board

• 150 Speed
• 40 Precision Power (Might be able to do 45) for cutting
• Estimated 12 - 20 Precision Power for engraving
• 1 Pass
• Auto Focus Height

Matboard

• 200 Speed
• 60 Power
• 1 Pass
• Auto Focus Height
• .08in material thickness

Ceramic

• 500 Speed
• Full Power
• 2 passes
• .25 material thickness

-Tested the glowforge on a ceramic coaster (4/27/2021) with a speed of 750 and found we had better luck with 500. In future would try even a lower speed with at least two passes