There is a saying among those that operahe makerspaces: "people come for the 3d printer,and stay for the laser". We have Redsail CO2 lasers for nearly 10 years

There is a saying among those that operahe makerspaces: "people come for the 3d printer,and stay for the laser". We have Redsail CO2 lasers for nearly 10 years now, in our volunteer ran makerspace in Oslo. It works, but does requires a bunch of setup and maintenance. Of course with hundreds of different users yearly, anything will need that... But it is more and gives poorer results than GCC/Epilog (which another local lab has, albeit with more professional maintenance crew). GlowForge targets a user group which accept less tinkering. PS: expect to spend at least the same amount of money/time on ventilation system as the machine itself!!