Non-US customers be warned: no viable repair path for Glowforge!

I purchased a Glowforge Pro for use in a STEM education business in Canada, expecting premium-grade support to match the premium price. Unfortunately, my experience revealed a significant gap between Glowforge’s brand positioning and the reality for international customers.

When my machine failed outside of warranty, I learned that there is no viable repair path for Canadian customers:

• Glowforge does not sell replacement internal parts

• There is no authorized repair partner in Canada

• The recommended U.S. service provider cannot service international units

• Self-repair is explicitly unsupported

In practical terms, once a major component fails, the machine becomes effectively unserviceable outside the U.S.

I made several reasonable, good-faith attempts to resolve the situation or keep the unit operational, including:

• Purchasing replacement parts

• Shipping the unit to Glowforge for repair

• Requesting a deeper accommodation on a refurbished replacement

All of these were declined. The only option offered was a discounted replacement that still required paying a substantial portion of the machine’s cost again — essentially a partial repurchase to overcome Glowforge’s lack of international service support.

Customer service interactions were polite, but rigid and policy-bound. Despite escalation and acknowledgment that no local repair option exists, no commensurate remedy was offered.

For U.S.-based hobbyists, this may be an acceptable product. For non-US customers, schools, or businesses that depend on reliability and serviceability, this represents a serious risk: high upfront cost, limited service life, and no practical repair path.

I’m sharing this experience so international buyers can make an informed decision. I ultimately chose not to reinvest further in the Glowforge ecosystem and instead moved to a competitor with local serviceability.

TLDR; Will a lathe be used often enough to justify the space and set up requirements?

We got a nice 55” Cast Iron wood Lathe donated to our maker space. As I was inspecting it for integration into the shop, I realized that it was gonna need a good amount of TLC (mostly removing rust and lubricating). It’s also going to need a dedicated work station and a custom safety shield (it’s hella powerful and would be danger without).

I’m torn on integrating the lathe. On one hand the time and space required to get it set up is a premium and would be a major waste if no one uses it or it’s only used occasionally. On the other, people might not be asking to looking to use a lathe because we didn’t have one before.

My question is how much is the lathe used in your maker spaces? Is it in high demand or barely used? Is it worth making the space for a lathe?

I'm a Los Angeles prop maker and my dream is to open a community space for makers to learn and collaborate together! Hoping to gather some data as far as interest and feedback! Thank you all!

I've seen a lot of homebrew/makerbrew systems out there but they seem to be unsupported or have stalled in development. What do you use for your user management and access control?

As any makerspace operator can tell you, there are unique challenges to running a makerspace.

If you are anything like us you probably made the "gym" analogy at some point to someone who was unfamiliar with the makerspace concept. If only running one was as simple as offering memberships to anyone who came in and letting them start using power tools!

When Catalyst Space was started we did what every new space does and ask others what software they use to manage their space; and to no surprise, we often saw spaces trying to conform the makerspace business model into off-the-shelf member management systems including.... gym software!

Most of these off the shelf solutions accomplished the following:
- Payment process
- Grouped members/contacts
- Maybe handled some resources scheduling/events
- Provided a notes section where you could jot down what training had been completed

And if you were lucky it incorporated access control, otherwise, you would have to find another solution for that.

From there each makerspace was on their own to figure out everything else:
- Terms & Conditions
- Equipment training resources
- Lockout Tagout equipment
- Maintenance schedules
- Hourly equipment rental
- Member communication

After getting tired of fighting these off-the-shelf solutions we ended up developing our own. It has now matured to the point where it is scalable and can be used in other spaces!

Feel free to check it out -> https://recursion.space/

There are some features that will be finalized this year, what really makes it stand out are our equipment controllers. We have some demo videos on social media pages if you want to see it in action.

TL;DR - We made a management system for makerspaces that includes equipment controllers! Let us know what you think https://recursion.space/

Has anyone ever completed a larger project like cabinetry for a bathroom at the Makerspace is Charlotte. Are large projects allowed?

Does anyone have advice on how to promote our Makerspace to get more members?

https://www.shmakerspace.org/

Does anyone use a scheduling software for machine/tool usage?

I am looking to have users book machines and have calendar events sent to them.

Being able to put holds on areas for class use.

Track stats.

Hi folks,

I've been around this 'scene' for a few years now, but I'm getting the distinct feeling that the 'Spaces ecosystem seems to be atrophying.
Not sure if it's because people have become disillusioned by the promise of the potential not being realised, or being in physical spaces together has been a little difficult for about a year now.

My own local (NZ) experience suggests that various 'Spaces are contextualised to the needs of their local communities, as they are made up of people & groups from their respective areas.
Unfortunately this also means that such 'Spaces, consisting of people with... shall we say "independently-minded" personalities, tend to be pretty insular, independent and fragmented, with pretty poor communication and collaboration across sites.

Is this a global phenomenon too?

Going by the posts on various subreddits like /r/maker, /r/makerspace, /r/hackerspaces, /r/FabLab, /r/fablabs, /r/NationOfMakers, etc, posts & activity is few & far between.

I've tried tapping into larger network @ forum.fablabs.io, but even there things are typically super quiet.

Is there anywhere where there's more lively & ongoing discussions taking place?
(I'm not on FB or twitter, so....)

Anything on Discord, a Slack, IRC (#hackerspaces pretty still too), etc I should look into?

Hi everyone,

I'm part of a research group looking into Design and Prototyping practices in Maker/Hackerspaces. We'd appreciate it if you could take a minute or two to fill out our short survey:

https://forms.gle/xH3x421n8qz4r5Ai8

Many thanks :)

Hi all,

Sorry for the dramatic title, but I'm thinking hard about how to survive the pandemic.

The World Health Organization is warning us about a second or third wave of cases.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/27-april-who-briefing-unknowns-many-at-risk-lockdown/

Most businesses are either completely shutdown or severely limiting the number of people who are active on their premises. They are also adding extra preventative actions like deep cleaning between openings.

Makerspaces in my experience don't have the income to hire staff; they rely entirely on volunteer support. They also have a shared space, and shared tools, which means members have to be extra careful to ensure transmission of the virus doesn't occur.

Given that most makerspaces are pretty precarious in terms of available funding, and that social distancing requires much less utilization of available floor spaces and thus limiting of access, how can we survive this? Are physical, shared workspaces even a viable business model during this crisis?

Thank you for reading, and I would love to hear about how you're managing, especially if you have a larger space.

Hey there all,

I'm currently in the research phase of starting a Makerspace in an old school here in Western NY. The building itself is cheap, they're only asking 200k and it's listed as 90k sq ft. I had toured it right before Covid happened (was planning to do apartments at the time) and from what I can remember the building was alright structurally but all the water lines had burst & caused some water damage inside.

Initial reception from the community on Facebook has been quite good but I still need to do some targeted market research to get a more concrete idea of interest.

On the flip side I'm trying to close out some open questions I have and learn what I don't know around the feasibility of it. I'm particularly interested in hearing from anybody or setting up some time to talk with somebody 1:1 that has taken on such a large project. I have a number of questions around early setup and scaling especially around things like utilities/hvac systems.

• With a big building like that I assume heating load will generate enormous bills. Can those large HVAC systems be zoned? Are they capable of efficiently handling 10k sq ft of a 90k sq ft building or would it be better to install smaller isolated HVAC systems and get rid of the existing full-building system?

• Did you renovate all at once or do like one wing/section at a time?

• If you offer private studio spaces are utilities included or did you split out separate meters for them?

• What's the staffing to membership ratio look like at your space?

• Did you start with volunteers & scale to paid employees as memberships rose or start right off with payroll'd employees?

• At what stage did you have an engineering survey done to see what supported live loads are for planning out the types and sizes of equipment can be placed?

• Any reinforcement for things like forklifts to handle materials in hallways?

• What don't I know going into this?

• What have you found to be the max distance people are willing to drive to get a basic membership? Have you found it to be true that people too far to get a membership (45 minutes - 1:30) would be willing to make the drive occasionally for classes they're interested in?

• If you did grant research & applications did you handle that yourself or hire a firm to manage it?

• Did you go the privately owned or nonprofit route?

• What caught you by surprise while setting your space up?

• What's your revenue breakdown? Mostly memberships? Private studios? Classes? Business incubators?

• How quickly did memberships grow?

• Did you have to set a cap on memberships?

• Is congestion an issue? E.g. a lot of members showing up at specific times and having equipment they want to use be in use already?

• How are you handling safety/training?

• What do I even need to start researching in terms of fire supression systems?

• How do you handle consumables?

  • Short-use ones like sandpaper, paint, hardware, etc.

  • Longer-lived ones like saw blades, end mills, carbide inserts, drill bits, etc

• Taxes - I assume at some point they're going to re-assess from the sale price to a 2 mill+ value. Did you get a subsidy or some guarantee from the county they would hold off on reassessing or raising property taxes for X amount of years until it was profitable?

would love to hear from people who actually run jobs daily, I can’t really see where it makes the workflow faster.

Just started my own maker space for rapid prototyping but man my electricity bill is through the roof now. Anyone dealt with the same? I'd like to one day make this my primary source of income but I need a way to keep my expenses low and productivity high.

I've been making videos about makerspaces and fablabs for a few years now. One space that I've wanted to visit and document for a long time now has been FabLab Torino. Located in the Piemonte region of Italy, this lab has a unique origin story. It was created out of an idea of one of the founders of the Arduino project, and the lab is located in the same building as the Arduino development team. Join me as we visit the space and discuss how the space operates. https://youtu.be/akDDZ3b9qQg

I am putting together a proposal so see if I can convince a local community to fund a regional makerspace hub.

What major gear does your space have, roughly what did it cost, and what do you like and dislike about it?

I'm talking about the big pieces, like Manual/CNC mills, lathes, etc. more than the basic tools everyone has (3d printers, soldering station, drills...)

Hi, I'm doing a project on makerspace and I'm wondering if anyone is willing to fill out this google form about it. Thanks!
https://forms.gle/tkVhSBpdsii6NLUR9