Q&A with Dan April 20th, 2016

We announced some pretty big news today, and it’s been too long since we’ve done a live Q&A. @Bailey and I are going to sit down to take audience questions tomorrow at 11:30a Pacific.

Please post your questions to this thread. If you see a question you’d like to see answered, click the :heart: so we know you’d like to hear it too.

The livestream is over now, but it’s archived at:

and if you miss the chance to post your questions here, we’ll take some live questions at the end of the chat.

Thanks, as ever, for your support of us.

36 Likes

I would “heart” this, but I’m out of likes for the day. I’m quite excited about the Q&A!

Q: How are spirits at GF headquarters with this new timeline announcement?

12 Likes

Have you got the team going to Maker Faire Bay Area set yet? Whom can we expect to see? Or at least see in the event coverage since I’ll be stuck in France.

3 Likes
  • BIGGEST UPCOMING HURDLE FOR GF

  • 3D ENGRAVING


  • Pass Through

  • What is the current state of completion of the glowforge from a hardware and a software perspective?

  • What do you see as the biggest hurdle on the way to shipping glowforges at this point?

  • Given that you will have an extra 6 months of development time, are there going to be significantly more features scheduled to be in the software at the time of shipment?

  • Are you planning on selling pre-packaged kits that will have the right amount of materials to allow you to make specific objects on the glowforge? (e.g. a lamp kit, pen holder mousepad kit etc)

  • Do you have one at home for the kids to beta test? Kids can be great beta testers when it comes to ease of use and workflow optimizations

  • Jeremy’s question 2 posts up ^^. I hope everyone is breathing a bit more easily with this extra space. As someone sitting down to put in some hours of nighttime programming to meet a deadline, I can certainly empathize.

22 Likes

Are we going to see any demos of the pass-thru feature set & any news about the filter?

Are we going to see a ramp up of beta units to folks outside of the Seattle area?

20 Likes

When do you hope to have first germination of the store ready, so people can plan for releasing their own creations and knowing what they expect to have ready for it?

8 Likes

I guess the most important question is: “how confident are you about the 12/31/2016 date?”

How soon before we can access the design and materials stores?

What does the decision to move production to the USA mean for shipping processes?

Given the delay are you likely to remove the NDA from more beta testers before the production model is ready?

11:30 AM Wednesday Pacific time is 4:30 AM Thursday here, how long will the Q&A last?

6 Likes

Q: Would love to know more about the bonus materials being thrown in, specifically with respect to surface area/dimensions. Should we expect small sample swatches, 1’x1’ squares, sheets that fill up the entire laserable bed? With no baseline, it’s hard to know what $150 of materials really means.

And to be clear, this is not motivated out of any form of greed. I’d have happily waited until December with or without the “freebies”. Just curious about quantities so I can start dreaming up projects that could utilize these new materials being provided!

4 Likes

can i be a beta tester?

i dont know what else to ask but i want to at least say something. im disappointed yes, but i still want my GF.

What feature of the GF is most exciting to you?

What feature is causing the most problems? (Power supply isnt a feature :wink: )

How many beta units would you like to release?

What is the best day you have had working on the GF project?

What do you see as the most challenging software feature you would like to have?

13 Likes

Q: I was at the Bay Area Maker Faire last year and it was a complete zoo. Is there any possibility of getting some sort of preferred access to test cut something at the booth if we are “founders”?

7 Likes

I know the glowforge will be using grey scale for engraving depth, my question is, will the software change a color photo into black/white/grey automatically or should we change it before loading it into software to cut/engrave?

4 Likes

When will we the material store be open? Before shipment of the units?

4 Likes

@dan_berry
Got it I’ll add my questions.

Given the longer wait, any chance of additional fairs or events seeing visits from a Glowforge? I’d love a chance to see and experience one running in the wild since it’s going to be a while for delivery, and the options to see them are pretty limited especially on the East Coast.

1 Like

As a serialized device that depends on a web connection to function, will it be possible to disable a Glowforge remotely in the event that one is stolen?

11 Likes

Has staffing up been an issue that’s caused any delays?

How much has software development been delayed due to the power supply?

Is the hardware team working on the air filter now?

4 Likes

On the air filter I plan to have the GF in my computer room that is also shared with my fur babies. I plan to work mostly with wood. is the air post filter going to be safe or ‘mostly safe’ the distinction being small animals may have more sensitivity to air then us humans. has/will lab testing be done to quantify the effectiveness of the air filter

8 Likes

How close are you to releasing information about the Design store? Will it ONLY be Glowforge staff designs? Or will there be a community submission process for designs.

What information can you release about the Filters.

What materials are you currently looking at for your Proofgrade™ line?

Has there been any work on an Inkscape plug-in for the Glowforge app yet?

7 Likes

Question: Really a statement in the form of a question like that dumb TV game.
Will you consider delivering machines the moment the hardware is acceptable, with a sparse minimal set of software functions, say vector cut a PDF or SVG and one level engrave. Some of us might settle for that and the whizzbang software features can be added at your leisure.I think I saw that much at your first open house.

4 Likes