Great question! Every Glowforge laser is easy to set up and comes with everything you need to get started creating with hundreds of materials on Day 1. There are 2 series of Glowforge lasers: 

• Our Performance Series is for people who want our fastest, most powerful lasers whether it's for a powering business, starting a side hustle, or teaching in the classroom. It includes Glowforge Pro HD (our fastest laser ever!), Glowforge Pro, Glowforge Plus HD, and Glowforge Plus lasers. 
• Our Craft Series is for  crafters and other creative enthusiasts looking to level-up their making with compact, easy-to-use lasers. It includes Glowforge Aura and Glowforge Spark Craft Lasers.  

Whichever Glowforge laser you choose, it’ll be easy, fast, and fun to get started: within thirty minutes of receiving your Glowforge, you can be holding your first finished print! Here are some more details to help you make the right choice for you!

Glowforge uses subtractive manufacturing while traditional 3D printers use additive manufacturing. A 3D printer builds up material, like plastic filament, layer by layer. With Glowforge, you’ll put a piece of material like leather, wood, or acrylic in the machine and it carves out your product using laser light. The technical name for the category of tools that includes Glowforge is a CNC laser cutter engraver, but that's a mouthful, so we call it a 3D laser printer.

You can make an endless variety of useful, beautiful, and practical things from a bunch of different materials like wood, leather, felt, fabric, acrylic, paper, and more. See what amazing things other Glowforge owners are making over on Instagram, #glowforge.

Great news! You can use your Glowforge from a Mac, PC, tablet, and smartphone, using our simple, powerful, and free web interface.

Glowforge is incredibly easy to use. Most of our customers tell us it takes them less than 30 minutes to get their printer out of the box, plug it in, set it up, AND finish their first print!

The web interface, point-and-click software, and simple hardware (just one button!) combine to make it both simple and easy to use.

Your Glowforge comes with a detailed manual to help you learn to use it easily and quickly. We also have many resources to help: our community forum answers most questions within hours, our detailed learning information at glowforge.com/support answers the most frequently asked questions, and we’re always here to help if you have a question.

We’ve seen incredible creativity from people ranging from preschool students to great-grandparents. We have no doubt you’ll be able to create amazing things!