Product Updates — New Features & Changelog

What shipped in September 27 – October 8, 2026

• Dated release notes for every user-facing feature, improvement, and fix.
• The workspace updates continuously — no version downloads or release waits.
• 2026-10-08 — Fill the Whole Background and Mechanical Filigree Styles: New Fill the whole background option: turn it on and your design fills the part edge to edge with dense detail, instead of a subject on open material. It stays off unless you turn it on, and The Fabricator remembers your choice. If your prompt describes an all-over texture like filigree or circuitry, you'll get a tip suggesting it. A new Mechanical Filigree Style DNA family: Clockwork Filigree, Filigree Spire City and Cyborg Muse Filigree weave baroque acanthus scroll through pipes, pistons, lens rotors and circuit traces, packed edge to edge. Inspired by a member's dense MASTER designs, and made for slides, frames and panels you want fully covered. Pattern Size now works when no Style DNA is selected, so Micro gives finer, denser detail on prompt-only designs.
• 2026-10-07 — FORGE 2.0, Serpent Styles, and Span the Whole Part: FORGE is now FORGE 2.0: a new-generation engine that fills each part more completely, at the same 5-credit price (multi-panel sheets stay 6). Designs you made earlier keep their original engine name in your Armory. A new Serpents Style DNA family: Coiled Cobra, Constrictor Coil Wrap, Rattlesnake Strike and Serpent & Scroll, drawn at realistic length with even, consistent coils, joined by Gadsden Snake and Snake Scales. Snake Scales is also a new Background option. Span the whole part: turn it on and your subject runs along the full length of the part, head at one end, instead of sitting small in the middle. If the panel you pick for your subject is an open frame, The Fabricator now warns you before charging, so you can choose a solid panel; if you continue, the subject is sized to the frame's solid metal and the result tells you so. Result notes are now shown in Spanish too.
• 2026-10-07 — Fuller Engraving on Thin Parts and Reference Designs: Thin rails, arms, hooks and tips on frame-style parts are now engraved all the way to the end instead of being left blank. When you upload a reference and ask for scrollwork or filigree around it, The Fabricator now fills the whole part with that ornament and seats your subject inside it, instead of returning a mostly empty part.
• 2026-10-06 — Showcase Posts Name Their Style DNA: Designs you share to the Showcase now record the Style DNA they were made with, whether you share from the Armory or straight from the Fabricator. Private styles you minted yourself stay private, and the homepage's Make one like this links now start from each piece's real style.
• 2026-10-06 — Vector Stacker: Cut Files That Match the Check: The Vector Stacker's free one-tap fixes are tested again before you see them: each one is re-run against THE CHECK, and only fixes that help are offered, with what they change. Painted builds of a drawing keep every paint on its own sheet, and every cut file carries the shape THE CHECK measured, so no sheet holds only a piece's holes. Word signs keep every letter. Photo Bands uses the sheet material you pick in its assembly guide, 3D view and file names, and its ZIP now includes the check you read. Mandala waits for a drawing before you export, Start over resets the recipe, and new cards flag a picture too small for its size or a photo used as a Shape Scene silhouette. Help covers all six recipes, word-sign crack engraving starts off, and Add Style DNA detail to a sheet now sits on the Check step.
• 2026-10-06 — Machine Files on Your First Design, Shop Proof Emails, and 40+ Improvements: Your first finished design now downloads straight as a LightBurn, xTool or EZCAD file, with the PNG still one tap away. The Fabricator remembers your machine format and highlights it on every export. When a Style DNA search finds nothing, you can mint that style in the Style Foundry with the name already filled in. Box Maker: after burning the kerf test card, tap the value under the slot that fit and the joints update. Bulk Personalizer can download every record laid out on bed-sized SVG sheets, ready for one burn. Shops: publishing a proof now emails your client their private proof link automatically, and the Command Overview has a Won card showing the dollars booked this period and your average deal. Magic Edit's Try Again goes back to the same image, mask and prompt so you can adjust the wording and re-run (confirmed and charged like any edit). Outline Studio keeps your photo, corners and any AI cutout if your phone reloads the tab, shows progress during AI Vector and Isolate, and adds a magnifier while you drag corners. Image Lab: the Slice tab has a bottom action bar on phones, finished Remove BG batches download as one .zip or go to Photo Prep in one tap, and if a slow export closes your phone's share sheet, a File ready prompt lets you share or save with one tap. Next-step buttons are larger and show what the next step costs, or FREE. Repeat pack buyers see on the pricing page how much the right Operator plan would have saved them, based on their own purchases. After checkout, the receipt says about how many runs of your engine you just bought, and the low-credit and Credit Wall buttons are easier to tap on phones. Command Center shows your running and recent paid jobs. Profile shows your credits once, the phone upload page is in Spanish and works with keyboards and screen readers, and the welcome page is the one place that asks you to verify your email, with a Check now button. Notifications keep new items highlighted and show when each happened, the phone menu opens on the section you're in, and the ⌘K palette can sign out, switch language and copy the page link. After you post a burn to the gallery you get its link with a one-tap Share, shares from post pages earn referral credit, and the Request Board suggests existing requests to upvote while you type. Every tutorial now belongs to a learning track, settings tips link to matching Parameter Library records, machine pages highlight the one you're viewing and quote it in place, and partner applicants see a clear three-step status. If your Armory holds more designs than your plan keeps after a membership ends, you now get clear notices of how many are over, the date they're safe until and what happens after. Customers holding unused credits get a short reminder that their balance is still waiting.
• 2026-10-05 — Your Armory Is Safe During the 30-Day Grace Period: If your membership ends or a card payment fails, every design in your Armory now stays put for the full 30-day grace period. Saving a new design no longer removes older ones while you sort out billing.
• 2026-10-05 — Fabricator Progress, Phone-Friendly Jobs, and Site-Wide Polish: The Fabricator shows a progress bar and an estimate that grows with your panel count, a larger Hide progress button, and a Try the sample part button on an empty canvas. Long jobs now keep your phone screen awake, show the time in the tab title, and mark the tab Done when they finish in the background. You can also opt in to a notification from the Jobs page. Paste an image straight into Magic Edit, Remove BG, Upscale and Vectorize. Coin Designer history now survives a page refresh. Image Lab sends several dropped photos to the cloud batch, with a drag-to-compare slider and tidier recipes on phones. Box Maker takes typed thickness and kerf with common material chips; Bulk Personalizer flags every record that overflows; Tumbler Templates exports LightBurn .lbrn2 files with size-stamped names. Your profile opens with a credits and plan strip, including the end date of a cancelled plan, and you get a heads-up email before a cancelled subscription ends. Community digests now include unread messages and votes. Smaller polish across the site: recent tools in the menus, Report a problem and Ask the Assistant links in Help, studio links on gallery posts, smarter Parameter Library search, the Universal Scaler seeded from My Machine, and shareable quote links with a review bar for clients.
• 2026-10-04 — Start Free Opens Sign-Up, Now on Phones Too: Start free now opens the sign-up form instead of the sign-in screen, and phones get a Start free button in the header, so creating your free account takes one tap.
• 2026-10-02 — Case Studies, a Price-Change Log, and Fairer Referral Rewards: New Case Studies section, starting with JB Creations' 1911 grip scrollwork: what was made, with which tools, and what the record does not yet include. Pricing now lists every credit price change with its date, so you can see what changed and when. Referral rewards now pay out when the person you referred fires their first AI run on credits they bought. Welcome and referral credits are no longer given to throwaway email addresses.
• 2026-10-02 — Downloads Work on Phones, and Restored Drafts Open in Magic Edit and Mockup Studio: Downloads now save on phones across the site: merged Fabricator PNGs, isolated fills, depth maps, the image viewer, puzzles, Image Lab and more open your share sheet or save the file, and you see a clear message with an Open image option if your phone blocks it. Quote and Burn Card PDFs also save in the app. Reopening a saved Magic Edit or Mockup Studio draft no longer fails on the first edit; the saved image is loaded properly before anything is charged. Image uploads are checked more strictly: tools only work from images you sent or saved yourself, and a bad image is turned away before any credits are used.
• 2026-10-02 — Coin Designer: Saved-Draft References, Phone Downloads and a Rim Border Choice: Reopening a saved Coin Designer draft now keeps your reference image working: the design is matched to your picture again instead of being made from the text alone. Download on a phone now saves the coin PNG (or opens the share sheet) instead of doing nothing. If the phone still blocks it, a message lets you open the image and long-press to save it. New Rim Border choice: Decorative, Plain line or None. Typing "no border" in the style prompt now also removes the decorative ring band, while the rim lettering stays.
• 2026-10-02 — Shared Outlines Stay Private Until You Unlock Them: Member-shared outlines are now protected: the library shows a watermarked preview, and the full file downloads through a private link only after you unlock it. The creator's name is no longer shown publicly. Upload limits and account checks were tightened behind the scenes; nothing changes in how you use the site.
• 2026-10-02 — Fractal & Flow Styles, and MASTER Keeps Your Style's Own Look: New Style DNA section, Fractal & Flow: Lichtenberg Fractal Burn, Fractal Spiral and Smoke & Vapor, plus Tangle Pattern and Topographic Relief. These are all-over patterns that branch, curl and drift, made for knife scales, grips, pens and boards. MASTER no longer adds broad scroll leaves to styles that have none, such as runic, Damascus, wave and segment patterns. At MICRO and FINE Pattern Size, strokes stay bold without enlarging the motifs you asked for. Asking for a number or a word in a position, such as a two-digit number above the centerpiece, or for labels on each section, is now treated as requested lettering instead of being forbidden. Runes on a reference you upload are kept too. Sharper Style DNA samples: more than a dozen picker samples were redrawn without cropped subjects or drawn border lines, and each style's description now follows its current prompt, so Basic Relief Scroll and Master Relief Scroll render with the open, bold leaves they promise.
• 2026-10-01 — ULTRA Delivers Its Full 4K Detail, and Repeat Fires Upload Once: ULTRA now builds single-part designs from its full 4K render, so the fine linework you pay for reaches your download instead of being rebuilt from a smaller working image. Firing again on the same canvas is faster: your part and art zone upload once and are reused for the next FIRE and for Smart Select and Extract Object taps, instead of being sent again every time. Uploads are kept for 7 days.
• 2026-09-30 — PANEL ULTRA Keeps Your Whole Hero Group, and Redrawn Sheets Refund: On a PANEL ULTRA sheet with a chosen hero panel, a request for a group, such as see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil skulls, now keeps the whole group in that panel. Before, the group could be split up and the panel shipped with only one of them. If the engine redraws your panels smaller than their real shape, the sheet is no longer delivered with checker squares left inside the part. It gets one automatic retry, and your credits are refunded if the retry fails too.
• 2026-09-30 — Armory Renders Reopen With the Right Art Zone, and Restore Brings Back Your Result: Opening a finished render from your Armory with Use in Fabricator now brings back an art zone that follows your part. Before, the whole photo became the art zone, so a saved outline came out as a solid black sheet and the next FIRE filled the whole rectangle. Save Outline now stops and explains when the art zone is empty or covers the whole canvas, instead of saving a blank or solid black outline. When your art zone covers almost the whole photo of a part on a plain background, FIRE now asks before spending credits. A blank plate fired edge to edge still goes ahead once you confirm. After Restore Your Last Session, the result you were looking at is back on the canvas, not just your part and art zone. Earlier results stay in EXPORT.
• 2026-09-29 — Free Credits on Every Engine, First-Run Referral Rewards, Proof of Burn Credits, and a Public Outline Library: Your welcome credits now work on every engine. Spend them on SPARK, FORGE, MASTER 2.0 or ULTRA, and on every Coin Designer engine, to see a higher engine on your own part before you buy anything. It is still 12 credits after you verify your email, used within 30 days. Refer a friend and you now earn 15 credits when they fire their first AI run, and 15 more when they make their first purchase. They still get 15 bonus credits. Referral rewards stop at 500 credits per member, and the Refer page now says so plainly. Proof of Burn: rather not start a subscription? Choose 50 credits instead of the free Operator month when you send your burn. No card, no renewal. The offer runs through December 31, 2026, and the date is now on the page. The Terms of Service now say what already happens: a failed AI run refunds its credits automatically, usually within a minute, with no support ticket. We call it the Refund Rule, and it is on the home, pricing and refund pages. The pricing table labels every row correctly again (after 3D RELIEF was added, some rows showed the wrong tool name beside a price), Material 3D Preview is listed at its real 2 credits, and plans read Operator 50, 150 and 350 everywhere on the page. Guide pages for Etsy sellers, sign shops, awards shops, schools and new members no longer show a comparison heading with a placeholder where a competitor name should be. They now have their own question headings. The home page says what Reticle Red does in one line, "AI laser engraving art that fits your part", names the parts and the machines it works with, and the Spanish page leads with the same promise. The free part outlines are now a public library, grouped by part: rifle and pistol magazines, pistol grip panels, knife scales and wallet plates, and tags and blanks. Each outline has its own page with a true-scale preview, its size and safe margin, and one button that opens it in The Fabricator as your art zone. Outlines that members share to the Armory marketplace are listed there too, by part name only. Unlock one and it opens straight in The Fabricator.
• 2026-09-29 — Fabricator: Put a Saved Outline Back on Your Photo: Saved outlines can now go back onto your photo, lined up. Open your photo, pick an outline from your Armory and choose Place on this photo: the outline becomes the art zone on top of it, and your photo and art stay as they are. An outline saved on the same photo lines up exactly, and Undo takes it back. If the outline was saved at a different size, a Line up step opens: drag it, pull the corner to resize, turn it with the top handle or two fingers on a phone, or type exact numbers. Fit to photo and Reset are one tap away. New outlines remember the photo they were traced on. When that photo is in your Armory or a saved workspace, Open with its original photo brings the two back together in one step. Save Workspace now keeps your art zone too, so a reopened workspace has the photo and its outline together. Older workspaces open as before.
• 2026-09-28 — Fabricator: Subjects Stay Clear of the Holes in Your Part: A part with a large hole or cut-out no longer gets its figure drawn across the hole. When the openings leave little room, SPARK CORE, FORGE CORE and ULTRA CORE now draw a single subject (no Style DNA, no reference photo) inside the part's largest clear area, so no hole can cut through it. The rest of the part stays bare. Same engine, same price. Before you FIRE, the Run Plan tells you when a part has openings and where the subject will go. If a run still has to refund, the message names the opening and the clear area, in English and Spanish. If only a small tip of the subject, such as a boot or a rifle muzzle, crosses a cut edge, the Fabricator trims it at the cut, closes the outline there and delivers your art with a note, instead of refunding the whole run.
• 2026-09-28 — Fabricator: PMAG Tones for Polymer Magazines: PMAG TONES, inside FORGE COLOR's palette: pick your magazine colour (Black, FDE, OD Green, Stealth Grey or Mag Grey) and your laser (Fiber or MOPA), and the Fabricator draws only the light tones a laser can actually make on polymer, such as bleach white, bone, tan and smoke grey, on your magazine's own colour. A laser cannot make true colours like red or blue on polymer, so PMAG TONES never offers them. Switch off any tone your laser does not produce. Same 6 CR as FORGE COLOR; PMAG TONES runs on FORGE COLOR only. See it on the magazine before you burn: the result shows your tones over your magazine colour, and the LightBurn file and layered SVG hold one layer per tone, lightest first, named like "Tone 1 - Bleach white". The magazine colour is never a layer, because it is the unmarked plastic. Free PMAG calibration grid (no AI, no credits): download a small test grid for MOPA or Fiber as a LightBurn file or SVG, burn it on a scrap magazine, and note which square gives each tone. Save your picks in the browser and your tone layers carry those settings. The grid is a starting sweep, not recommended settings: results depend on your laser, lens and magazine.
• 2026-09-27 — Fabricator: MASTER COLOR and a One-Tap SVG: MASTER COLOR joins FORGE COLOR: the same palette colour art, drawn by MASTER. It paints richer, fuller scenes that stay tightly inside your mask and gives every colour you pick a real job, so your whole palette gets used. It takes about twice as long as FORGE COLOR and costs the MASTER rate. One panel per fire; for multi-panel sheets use FORGE COLOR. Simple mode now shows the plain "SVG (Illustrator / Inkscape)" download next to the LightBurn, xTool and EZCAD files, on desktop and phone, so you no longer need to switch to Pro to get the SVG.
• 2026-09-27 — Fabricator: Backdrops, Clearer SVGs and Plain Decline Messages: Backdrop chips in the Fabricator prompt: tap Alley, Library, Wilderness, Desert, Neon city, Garage, Battlefield, Snowy forest, Saloon, Jungle, Graveyard or Beach to add that scenery behind your subject, and tap it again to clear it. One backdrop at a time; your subject stays the focus and the scenery stays inside its own panel. You can still type your own setting instead. Finding the SVG is easier: the vector download is now called "SVG (Illustrator / Inkscape)" and the colour download "Layered SVG (one layer per color)", on desktop and phone, with tips saying what each opens in. Colour SVGs now open in Illustrator and Inkscape with one named layer per colour, such as colour-1-cream-EDE6D6. When the engine declines a request, the Fabricator now says so in plain words instead of an error code: this commonly happens with real people, named characters or brands, or explicit content, so try an original character or describe an art style. The message also says whether your credits were refunded.
• 2026-09-27 — Fabricator: Multi-Panel Subjects Without the Surprises: When you ask for a subject on two or more panels with no Style DNA, the Fabricator now asks how it should sit before anything is charged: one hero across the panels (with a preview of the gaps that get cut), one fire per panel, or the hero in one panel with the rest left bare. "Hero in one panel" draws only the panel you pick, so the subject can no longer land on a gap or in the wrong panel. One fire per panel, auto-assembled on your canvas: each panel is drawn by its own fire with its own complete subject, and the Fabricator puts them together on your canvas. It works on Forge and Ultra sheets of 2 to 4 panels, you pay for each panel, and the total (for example 2 panels × 6 CR = 12 CR) is shown before you confirm. If a panel still fails after its retry, nothing is delivered and every panel is refunded. A multi-panel sheet with one subject no longer refunds just because the other panel came back bare as you asked, and its automatic retry no longer tells the engine to crop your subject or fill every panel. A subject drawn across the gap between panels is now caught and redrawn once, then refunded, instead of being delivered sliced. Failure messages now name the panel that failed and the next step.

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