Glowforge release

[Michael Ramsey]

It really is sad.... When speaking of starting a business, first off I would never invest in an unproven piece of equipment such as a GF. What you can afford to spend? How much potential revenue was lost while waiting for the mythical animal to arrive. When I looked at the GF site I noticed that there are no replacement parts available. What's the replacement cost of the tube or the proprietary filters for the air filter option. I don't think I saw anything regarding the life of the tube or other consumables.

[John Lifer]

Tube had been discussed in the past. Initially they were going to make you send machine back. A lot of negative feedback over shipping costs of machine and so it is supposed to be user replacement. I think they supposedly said $500 with shipping included. But that is always subject to change. Filters? What filters? That model is still being developed........ I think next year is earliest shipping of that option. Which may mean never.

[Michael Ramsey]

Tube had been discussed in the past. Initially they were going to make you send machine back. A lot of negative feedback over shipping costs of machine and so it is supposed to be user replacement. I think they supposedly said $500 with shipping included. But that is always subject to change. Filters? What filters? That model is still being developed........ I think next year is earliest shipping of that option. Which may mean never.

Exactly! I wouldn't buy anything , ever, on speculation.

[Doug Fisher]

>>I think I posted this before but the sad, sad part is there are people like the veteran who had ordered one to start a business.<<

That is so unfortunate about the veteran.

With that said, and speaking in general -not specifically about the vetran, anyone who has waited this long to buy a laser to start a business doesn't have enough good business sense to be going into business for themselves. If they believed a Glowforge was a good investment for a business laser, that confirms things even more.

[Michael Henriksen]

Spot on Doug. If you plan to start a business with a piece of untested equipment then you have not done your homework. Moreover the GF is not the cheapest machine out there. A SH-350 cost less and is much more capable of doing production work. As long as you upgrade the HV PSU it's a useable little machine to start up with if you don't want to invest a lot.

[Nigel P. Jones]

The natives appear to be getting restless... A couple interesting recent posts over on the owner's forums:

Rapidly losing confidence in GlowForge

There are just too many things piling up and not enough clear honest communication. I’m a day 1 Pro order in the US and still haven’t received my email.

• I see a thread posted in Problems and Support get locked with a terse response from @dan
• I see a banner on the forum that has no “last updated” timestamp but has reflected the same info for a couple of weeks but then Dan say that they’re updating “at least once a week”.
• I see posts on Facebook from people asking “when are you shipping?” with enthusiastic responses from GlowForge saying “we’re shipping now!” and continuing to claim that new orders will be delivered by November.
• I see barely a trickle of new posts or updates to the spreadsheet stating folks have received their email or their unit, and those all appear to be basic units.
• I see GlowForge at Maker Faires touting the device and continuing to make promises of delivery to new customers by November.
• I see posts about damaged units and ‘acceptable’ cosmetic issues being explained away, while I see other Facebook posts that have responses from GlowForge stating clearly that they are now shipping final production units.

Things just don’t add up. In two days it will be two years since I ordered.

Please, no “I’m sorry, we let you down” responses or “well you can just cancel” responses. I also don’t want to hear “they aren’t required to divulge specific shipping volumes or internal timelines or other sensitive company info” – I’m not asking for those things. It’s time for GlowForge to be up front and honest with what’s going on.

Feeling hugely disrespected as a customer.

Incomplete SW - I’m upset

I’ve been waiting very patiently. I’m not even that upset that there have been so many, many delays. I’m along for the ride. I’ve been enjoying this forum. Delaying gratification can be good for the soul. Building this thing well takes time, and they calculated it wrong. I completely made my peace with that.

I’m making an assumption just from reading reports from current users: the software is incomplete and buggy. The camera is not aligning things accurately. The usable space is temporarily smaller, many features like continuous auto focus, auto align when flipping, pass through alignment, kerf management, auto detect objects, etc etc etc. it’s very incomplete. I know it’s coming, but there is no schedule as far as I can see. Could this be well into next year? Certainly. Probably. No way to know.

I’ve been thinking about the state of the software, and the reports of such incomplete and error prone software is really upsetting me. I expected that when they extended the schedule to work on the hardware and logistics and packaging and shipping, they gained way more than a year in extra software development time. They should have hired an extra developer if they were all hands on the hardware deck. By now, the punch list of original advertised functions would be tested and deployed, and they would be half way through that “hopper”. Slip the date, add to the project plan.

Again, I’m not complaining about the delay. But I’m in SW development. I see it as very poor project management to be so behind on the software. Really. I totally see how the hardware was harder then they thought, and some of the software. The developers had this original list more than 2 years ago with the original deadline. The head of software was given the gift of time. It’s amazing when that happens. If it were me, I’d never release a long delayed product with the software in this condition. I’d staff to the plan. Add developers to meet the deadlines. Still work like hell, not stretch the same tasks to the new timeline. I’m just not satisfied with production-quality software being promised “some time” in the future. I wouldn’t even bring it up if they were even close to on time.

On the software front, it's interesting to note that their co-founder focused on software left the company about a month ago: Glowforge co-founder Tony Wright departs, 3 years after helping launch 3D printer startup

[Kev Williams]

Reading some of what Wright says made me chuckle, such as “We sold about $28 million worth of these things when, just a month before, nobody had ever seen one. Think how amazing that is! "

yeah, but the thing is, lots of people know what lasers, laser engravers and >ahem< 3D printers are, and--- they saw videos of Glowforges actually working, on kitchen countertops and tables. The world saw a whole new toy to play with, something to break the boredom of Windows 8 and social media...

--Sad that Windows 8 is a better product...

[Bert Kemp]

Like you sad Kev they know what Lasers and 3 D printers are and there completely different, I mean noway is a Laser a 3D printer yet all these people fell for the BS that they were getting a laser 3D printer. Are they that naive?

[John Lifer]

Nigel, I hadn't seen the main brain behind the software has left. First one to realize he should leave the sinking ship! He can claim it was a success, and it WAS as far as creating a product that folks purchased sight unseen and most won't see what they envisioned.

[Michael Ramsey]

With all of the problems folks are reporting it sure seem like they purchased an alpha or beta product. I get the concept of kickstarter's for some new innovative things, but really?... not so much for lasers or other products that are trying to reinvent something that already exists.

[Bill George]

What we are seeing on here now was predicted on Sawmill Creek, on this forum a year or so ago. Where are the GF supporters now?

[Dave Sheldrake]

If you have a problem and need to return the unit it has to be shipped in the original box, if you don't keep the box SlowForge will sell you a new one for $200

I pointed out many of the problems they would have over 18 months ago, the core problem is still there...they do not have any staff that know anything about lasers

[Michael Henriksen]

Good marketing does not a product make!

[Dave Sheldrake]

Now there is a surprise...NoForge are emailing customers saying they aren't going to make the October deadline.......

[Bert Kemp]

Yep no surprise there. I still see Bankruptcy on the not to distant horizon and hundreds of people out their investment.