You should have your Glowforge already, but we let you down. Depending on your order date, your Glowforge will arrive between March and July.
You deserve better. We are heartbroken to disappoint you.
We realize that this could have a big impact on you, so we’re going to cover a lot of important topics:
• When you get your Glowforge, and why it’s taking so long
• Recent news
• First review (with Adam Savage)
• Revealing secret features
• Adding 6 months to the warranty
• We’re going to pay you for waiting (plus two more benefits)
• Canceling?
• I let you down
Dont worry. There is no reason to expect that July 2017 will slip. After all, that’s an extra 7 months to resolve any bugs and to develop the pro once the basic is worked out.
I think you are right palmercr…I have no idea where they are with their compliance testing, but my guess is not very far…1 bump that can’t be fixed with line filters, and its a board re-spin…now you are into 2018
From the video I gleaned that CE approval as been started but not completed. I am guessing domestic approval has also not been completed, which will be why all the units going out remain property of Glowforge. It would be illegal to sell them.
I think @dan is again being disingenuous when he says he could start production now but he is worried about quality. Yes of course it would be train wreck to go straight from a couple of pre-production units in the field for a couple of days to making thousands and sending them out, that isn’t something you suddenly realise. On the other hand, until you get at least domestic regulatory approval you can’t sell any and so can’t start high volume production.
No doubt. When producing things (and I work for a company that produces things), in our NPI (New Product Introduction) we always have at least 2 manufacturing assisted builds, where we work with the manufacturer to assemble products and setup the line while development is ongoing. This gets the line setup, and also gives us feedback on features/changes that can be made to the product to make manufacturing easier.
After that, we normally have a pilot build (what @dan is most likely doing now), where a limited number of units is built (few dozen), to ensure that the line is setup and can handle the scale it was designed for, and also to get feedback from a limited set of customers to get confidence that what we put out is bug free and free of defects .
In my business to ship a pilot unit you have to have all your certifications in place, but that isn’t the case for most.
Deep down I knew when the pre-release was announced that there would be no way to get feedback in a few weeks and start shipping , and I wish @dan would have been less optimistic with where things really were - would have minimized the impact that the late announcement obviously had.
It is a sound strategy that makes sense, but it is not the quickest to ship. It would have been nice if that had been outlined earlier, so that people can gauge progres by where things are. I hope that @dan will take the feedback a lot of us have posted on the forum, and change some of the communication strategies to include most substantive information, coming out in a more timely fashion.