Join us to celebrate and build maker culture together!

Maker Forums is a non-commercial, user-supported community of makers, mostly hobbyists, who are enthusiastic about many ways of making things, old and new. Laser engravers and cutters, 3D printers, CNC routers, and more! We help each other solve problems and enjoy sharing with and learning from each other. We’re a friendly place.

Share what you know, ask what you don’t

Feel free to browse anonymously, but if you create a Maker Forums Discourse account, you can post, comment, get notifications of new content, bookmark, like, react, and be part of a friendly community.

  • If you used Google+ in the past, you may use the Log In button and then click with Google, then select the Google account that you used with Google+, in order to be recognized as the author of the posts you originally made on Google+ that were imported into Maker Forums when Google+ was shut down.
  • Otherwise, just Sign Up — you can choose to create a password, or authenticate with Google or GitHub (or any other authentication method we add in the future). If you create a password, you can use strong two-factor authentication to protect your account.

You can explore the categories of content at Maker Forums, or ask for help. Our FAQ tells you what we expect of each other, including being kind to each other, keeping discussions in public, not doing illegal or unethical things, and not posting spam.

How to get help

We have several categories dedicated to helping each other. In particular:

  • If you need help with a K40 laser, please read our K40 Intro first, then ask in the K40 Laser: Help category.
  • The Smoothie category is the official forum for both Smoothieware and the Smoothieboard. When you post a request for help there, please fill in the template with details needed to help get you the help you are asking for!

Remember when asking for help that we’re hobbyists helping each other. Paul Stoffregen, of Teensy fame, wrote How to get technical help from strangers on the Internet. Please read it before asking for help, here on Maker Forums, or on any other forum. From his summary:

  1. Good first impression ⇒ Humans will want to help
  2. Explain context ⇒ Humans will understand your needs
  3. Share details ⇒ Humans will be able to help

Maker Forums Social

Maker Forums Social is part of the fediverse.

Major updates about Maker Forums, including Discourse site outages, are posted to the @owner account on Maker Forums Social.

  • If you already participate in the fediverse, just follow @owner@social.makerforums.info to get site updates.

  • If you do not yet particpate but would like to, active members of Maker Forums Discourse are eligible to open an account on Maker Forums Social.

You can browse Maker Forums Social to see what we’re talking about there.

Our origin story

Many communities formed on Google+ before Google shut down Google+ in 2019. Many members of those communities wanted to keep in touch. Some moved to Reddit, some to Twitter, some to MeWe — and some of us banded together to build our own community not subject to corporate whim.

The members of the “K40” community (for hobbyist CO2 laser cutters and engravers) on Google+ joined together on a new Discourse forum called Maker Forums, and invited other maker communities to join in. Several 3D printing communities, including the main 3D Printing community, and the HercuLien and Eustathios community, soon joined. So did communities focusing on CNC routers, ChiliPeppr, LaserWeb, and more. Many posts from Google+ were copied to the forum (by permission from community moderators) to preserve maker knowledge built up over the years.