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We love to think we\u2019re having a profound effect on people\u2019s lives. We believe digital manufacturing is accelerating human progress by unleashing profitable creativity at an unparalleled rate of knots.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re thankful to all our customers for putting their trust in us, and we take great pride and joy at being a part of their journey as they create products to start, expand and brand their businesses with amazing product ideas.<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s a side hustle<\/a>, a full-time gig<\/a> or a world class tech conference<\/a>, we\u2019re constantly blown away by the breadth and depth of the product creativity we see.<\/p>\n Enter Dan Shapiro. To say Dan\u2019s a bit of an overachiever it quite the understatement. As one of Ponoko\u2019s most successful customers to date, he loved laser cutting with Ponoko so much he started Glowforge<\/a>, the juggernaut making desktop 3D laser printers.<\/p>\n Dan and Ponoko\u2019s Derek Elley hit it off recently and decided to start working a little more closely together. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n As CEO and cofounder of Glowforge (and author extraordinaire), Dan has built his life dreaming up products that change people\u2019s lives in ways that are both large and small. Throughout his career, Dan\u2019s driving force has always been a boundless curiosity and a passion for inventive solutions.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until he started designing what would later became the most-backed board game in Kickstarter history<\/a> that he first learned about laser cutting<\/a> by ordering parts from Ponoko.<\/p>\n \u201cCreating Robot Turtles opened my eyes to this backwater technology that had been languishing in factories,\u201d he says. \u201cCNC laser cutter\/engravers were intimidating, expensive, hard to use and mostly unknown. But the core technology\u2014using a beam of light to print on dozens of different materials and build up beautiful products\u2014was something magical.\u201d<\/p>\n His experience building Robot Turtles eventually led him to creating his own, at-home personal laser cutter and engraver: Glowforge, the 3D laser printer.<\/p>\n Today, Glowforge printers have made their way into households around the world. Dan and his team are passionate about delivering a beautiful product that sets up in minutes and is easy enough for a child to use\u2014all while giving the average consumer the ability to dream, develop and print new products from dozens of materials right from their desktop. For their customers, it\u2019s transformative.<\/p>\n It all started one fateful morning. After becoming a dad, Dan fell in love with the idea of making things he could share with his kids. As the son of a computer science teacher, Dan pondered these questions during his usual morning routine: How old does a child really need to be to learn how to program? Did they even need to read? Could programming be reimagined as a new kind of kids game\u2014one that was fun to play (he shuddered at being pressed into another game of Candyland) for kids and adults alike?<\/p>\n \u201cI got out of the shower, put some generic robot clip art in Powerpoint and sent it to my inkjet, then told my four-year-old twins that I had a new game for us to play,\u201d he says. \u201cWe started experimenting with the rules. The kids couldn\u2019t get enough of it.\u201d<\/p>\n He got so excited about the game that he took a leave of absence from his job at Google and spent the summer working full time to develop it. The game took off on Kickstarter, and backers started clamoring for a special edition.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted pieces their kids could shove in their pockets and play make-believe with,\u201d Dan explains. \u201cAfter all the fuss over home 3D printers, I thought that was the answer. Three days and five miles of plastic spaghetti later, with only a few lumpy turtle blobs to show for it, I had a different opinion on the state of 3D printing.<\/p>\n \u201cI decided to try the laser at our local maker space,\u201d he continues. \u201cThe resulting turtles were OK, but at $3 a minute, there was no way I could make it work. Enter Ponoko. I had no trouble getting my design uploaded. Unlike the local maker space, the cuts were clean and the engraving<\/a> was crisp. I loved how quickly they were able to get all my questions answered and how personal the service felt. They made it easy to make a limited run for a game that was still in development.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s when Dan got a little crazy. His backers said they wanted more than just turtles; they asked for a special edition where every one of the 28 special pieces was laser cut! The problem here wasn\u2019t production, it was R&D. He needed quick turnaround to test his designs. It was back to the maker spaces, and the high expenses and charred edges, before he finally made the decision to invest in his own laser.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t much to look at or very easy to use. \u201cI had this giant industrial carbon dioxide cutting laser imported from China installed in my garage for a year,\u201d he says. \u201cIt took me days to get it to work, weeks to figure out the software and months to figure out how to explain it to my family. The thing looked like it belonged in a factory (because that\u2019s what it was designed for) and everyone thought I was kind of crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, it was the key piece he needed to finish the designs for the Kickstarter campaign<\/a>. Robot Turtles went on to raise $630K on Kickstarter\u2014ultimately becoming the most-backed board game in Kickstarter history\u2014but the real boon was still coming.<\/p>\n As he reflected on the Robot Turtles experience, Dan realized how lucky he was to have the skills and experience as an entrepreneur and engineer to navigate the tools he\u2019d needed to pull it all off. But one question lingered with him after the project\u2019s close: \u201cHow many more millions of people could do this sort of thing, if only they had the right tools?\u201d<\/p>\n Ponoko had been the perfect method for him to print hundreds of his designs. But there wasn\u2019t a great way to tweak one design a hundred different ways to get it just right. And what if you didn\u2019t have the skillset to navigate industrial machinery like his garage monstrosity?<\/p>\n That\u2019s when he came up with the idea for Glowforge, the 3D laser printer\u2014a way to finally break this technology free and make it accessible to the world.<\/p>\n From the very start, Dan set out to design a tool that would unlock people\u2019s creativity in a meaningful way, no matter their skill level. \u201cWe set out to reinvent the idea of \u2018homemade,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cWhat if you could sketch a design, then turn it into something real you could use, all without complicated software?\u201d<\/p>\n Glowforge filled the gap. Instead of relying on factories half-a-world away, Dan aimed to give consumers the ability to bring the factory right onto their desktop\u2014to print things they wanted, needed or just dreamed up for fun right away. And to make it easier than any other laser cutter\/engraver device had done before.<\/p>\n His idea resonated in a big way. Dan successfully launched the biggest crowdfunding campaign in history, with a record $27.9M in preorders in 30 days.<\/p>\n Beautiful enough to sit in your living room, Glowforge uses a beam of light the width of a human hair to cut and engrave things out of natural materials with no ink, sawdust, cartridges or basically anything besides wifi and a wall plug. Creating designs can be as simple as drawing with a pen. Glowforge has onboard cameras that scan and transform the image into a digital file that can be printed. At the same time, it works flawlessly from powerful professional graphic design or CAD software.<\/p>\n In short: It\u2019s a solution to everything Dan hated about industrial laser cutter\/engravers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe refer to it as a 3D laser printer,\u201d he says, \u201calthough the proper name is a CNC laser cutter\/engraver. \u00a0Like a traditional paper-and-toner laser printer, it can print at more than 1,000 DPI, black-and-white images. Yet unlike a laser printer, it can actually cut, engrave and carve three-dimensional products. We coined a term to convey the superpowers we\u2019d built into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike traditional 3D printers, lasers unlock dozens of beautiful materials. This includes printing or engraving on materials such as wood, leather, paper, fabric, cardboard, acrylic, stone, glass\u2014even chocolate.<\/p>\nReinventing Homemade: The Dawn Of The Personal Laser Cutter<\/h3>\n
The First Board Game To Teach Programming To Preschoolers<\/h3>\n
![\"Robot](\"https:\/\/www.ponoko.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Robot-Turtles-Board-Game-Playing.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nBringing The Factory Onto Your Desktop<\/h3>\n
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