@sfarmer, thanks for your post! I appreciate you joining the conversation. I’ll update everyone before the end of the month with the latest progress towards shipping. I know that’s not what you (or many others) want to hear right now, and that everyone would like more pictures, updates, and so on, but we’ve decided to keep our focus on our deadlines and provide shipping updates when, and only when, we have definitive news to report. We’ll have that by the end of the month.
Thanks for responding @dan. I for one am happy with that response. I’m a big believer in if you don’t ask you won’t receive. It’s also nice to see you’re ALWAYS plugged into the communication going on in the forums.
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That’s great news, @dan! An update by the end of the month is perfectly reasonable.
Please know that I want this product to be great too. We’ve all been waiting over a year. And no news leads people to speculate that we’re going to see the date slip.
Thanks for chiming in.
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I think its just more of trying to get reassurances that the date will be met rather than slip a 3rd time. Seeing is believing…
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When that 6 month delay was announced, it was like a punch in the gut. If it happens again, it will feel the same.
I understand that only one promise has been made - that Glowforge will ship when the founders are confident in the design, with a standing guarantee of your money back without question at any time up until they ask for the shipping address.
The date that is causing or hopes to rise in a crescendo is a projection. It’s not chiseled in stone until the man in the Hot Seat says it is. He hasn’t… yet.
One thing I am certain of, is the team is doing their level best to meet our expectations - and that Dan would do everything he could to avert the pain of having to announce another delay.
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how do you read this as great news? really! they can’t take a photo to show us all the units ready to ship out? Still no sign of the Pro Model, why? because they are so focused or because they are not actually ready to ship out? Sorry but no news is bad news, expect a another delay!
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Probably because he didn’t look at “What do we have right this moment?” NO NEWS!
And instead looked at “What have we just been promised within the next 2.5 weeks?” NEWS!
So… is news of news also bad news?
You gotta choose to be happy with what you have, or miserable because you can be.
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Have to agree with you here. Little to no news up to this point, followed by delaying until the last excusable second to say anything screams of another delay. This way when it is announced they can say “we held on as long as we could buts its just not possible.”
I’m not mad though, as soon as they said December I laughed, maybe they will surprise us…
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I have to agree with you, @gothampixel, that some pictures would be easy to do. It really doesn’t make sense that something like a feed of behind-the-scenes photos would distract GF from their goal of producing a great product.
A promise for an update in a couple weeks is good news, to me. At this point there are two possibilities.
Possibility 1: The only issues that remain are shipping related–nothing affecting mass production. This is the kind of issue we’re being asked to anticipate. In this case we may still see a brief delay. For example, if some packaging needs a redesign. Or warehouse procedures need redress. Most customers would accept this type of problem.
Possibility 2: It’s as bad as you propose, @gothampixel and there isn’t a warehouse full of units ready to ship. Another delay related to manufacturing will severely damage GF’s and @dan’s reputation–it would be a direct lie. We’ve been told that the product is basically ready and that GF needs to work out shipping. I believe most customers would not accept this kind of delay after everything that has transpired. In this case we can chose to cut bait and ask for a refund; or we can wait it out.
Even after the Glowforge ships. We all assume that this extended test period has produced a great hardware and software combination. I’m a software developer with an electronics background. I can tell you from experience that manufacturing a product like the Glowforge is not the hardest part. You never know what will happen once you get thousands of these in the field. Keeping the servers running, supporting any hardware SNAFUs, and general customer service are HUGE! They are not building a simple widget where their commitment is fulfilled once the product is in customers’ hands.
I ordered a Pro model with the filter. If that product doesn’t actually exist, I’m leaning toward cutting bait and asking for a refund.
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The first delay made me downgrade from pro to basic, if there is another delay, I will request a full refund. Hope the product comes out in time but I cant wait forever if it’s delayed
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Always barring the unknown unknowns. At the moment, I am confident that Willow and the other 37 will pull this off. I know there may be a delay again. I can deal with that if/when it comes.
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Thank you for the comment @dan – I think I understand the eagerness and excitement everyone has for the GF – it is looks to be an awesome piece of work and I think it will greatly enhance our various workflows and technical and artistic endeavors. For each of us, we have our own priorities, and for me, perhaps I am more patient and tolerant of delays and delivery dates and where my GF fits in the grand scheme of things at this point as I continue to become more and more aware of what is truly crucial in life. My wife just returned from Standing Rock while I kept the home fires burning here – and what she shared in and discovered there over things as basic as drinking water and human rights kind of set my values and wants into a broader perspective. I can wait for this to come through – there are other matters that I can focus on, and other differences I can make in the world until it does.
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Personally, I’m convinced that a Glowforge is going to be built and shipped to me in the near future. I’m convinced that the Glowforge team is working hard to make that happen.
I’m also convinced that they don’t think sharing the minutia of their progress is necessary. An opinion that I don’t like but can live with.
With that said, I also look forward to seeing some photos of the manufacturing side of this crowdfunding campaign. I emphasize “photos” because talk is cheap and a picture can speak 1000 words.
As I wrote and edited this post (a process that took much more time than it should have) I decided to check my Kickstarter history. I’ve backed eight physical products on Kickstarter. I’m pretty sure that six of them shared photos of their manufacturing progress and the other two weren’t complicated enough to warrant showing photos, IMO.
In my view, photos speak volumes, are exceptionally easy to produce, and also instill a great deal of confidence. These three factors combined with the fact that few photos of the Glowforge manufacturing process have been shared gives me pause. Again, I can live with this but I don’t think it makes a lot of sense.
As I poked around my Kickstarter history, I found this campaign update for Robot Turtles (a previous crowdfunding campaign of Dan’s) that was made at a similar point prior to the expected ship date…
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Interesting that the Robot Turtles campaign schedule was almost exactly 3 years ago and that shipping was promised for December and production started in November. Hopefully, history will repeat itself.
A GF is a bit more complicated than a child’s game though. I’ve been pretty impressed with the updates provided for the Codex Silenda KS project and it would have been good if GF could have approached that level of information transfer. I’m not sure the level of secrecy is completely warranted, but in a month or two it won’t make any difference.
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The Glowforge might be manufactured at a plant in which other products for other clients are produced as well. Sometimes secrecy agreements preclude such photos.
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Of course. But a person who was interested in showing their backers the progress they’ve made could figure out a way around such a limitation while still respecting their legal obligations.
A photo could be taken in an empty room, or outside, or at an angle that would preclude capturing secrets. The photo could be taken when the parts are being shipped out from manufacture. Or when they’re being inspected. Or the photos could be screened for sensitive content. Parts that have been rejected for design or manufacturing faults could be photographed. I’m 90% sure I’ve seen video of Foxcon assembly lines, video from Boeing plants, video from inside nuclear reactors, etc. Linus Tech Tips (a YouTube channel) and others apparently recently got a tour of Microsoft’s prototyping and testing labs. Journalists get embedded with the military and ride on Air Force One. I bet someone could figure out a way to get a shot of a box of Glowforge buttons.
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There is one other thing that could be preventing Dan from saying go on final production at this point; the last major update that he did give us mentioned that they were still working on getting certifications in place for the 60+ countries they will be shipping these units to. I suspect some or all of those certifications will require that a sticker be affixed to the units, and those stickers have to go on before they get loaded into boxes.
Also I was just doing a little bit of math, and given the size of the boxes our lasers and filters will come in, it would take well over a mile of warehouse shelves to hold them all! As such, I suspect they will be shipping them as they are built rather than storing them somewhere first.
Oh, and it also isn’t trivial for them to get photos of production, since the production line is in an undisclosed location somewhere else in the US. Because of this, I am quite certain we won’t see pictures of units being produced until Dan and/or Tony goes there to oversee the official startup of the production lines.
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Discussing what it would take to get production line pictures (figuring out the angles, negotiating for clearances, finding an anonymous spare room) pretty much argues dan’s point for him. Any of those things can be done, but they take hours to set up if everything goes right, days if everything doesn’t. (Looking back at the plant tours and dog-and-pony shows I participated in during my previous career, I am now retrospectively appalled at the amount of time we must have cost some of those folks. )
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Particularly since Glowforge staff who would know at least some of that stuff, aren’t at the factory.
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It happens when it happens. We’ve waited this long.
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