The hair turning white, accelerated aging… It’s gotta take a toll.
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Well… I read a lot of the thread but not all of it. Several disappointments in the update - seems to be the way of updates on this device, isn’t it?
I’ll only post a short bit on the tubes here since it now has it’s own threads: Complexity of replacement has to be revealed before shipping the units. As others have said, this is a huge deal, or deal breaker, for international customers. Not interested in repair depots or certified techs coming around - part of the sell was user replaceable. The other half is custom tubes. There’s provisions for if Glowforge shuts down on the software side, on the hardware side if they do close down what do users do? Or years down the road when they announce “sorry we can no longer get the tubes”?
On the shipping of the units: Why even have an order queue? Arbitrarily shipping units to people that garner a lot of likes is hardly a fair thing to do. Sure, it’s a relatively small number, but it’s still putting people ahead of those that supported Glowforge by ordering early. I understand the shipping to US customers first to work out shipping kinks, but again, why bother with a queue? People that ordered first probably didn’t worry too much about shipping issues and wanted theirs asap. Maybe bump people that threatened to cancel up to the front so they have less time to cancel. All in all the order doesn’t affect me much because we pre-ordered late in the game - I just know if I’m in a line I don’t particularly like the idea of someone butting ahead because the cashier knows them.
-J
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It isn’t clear to me if all US orders are going to be shipped before OS, or just a number to get a handle on the shipping.
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I don’t think we’ll know that before shipping begins. It’d be nice, but I wouldn’t count on it. They say in-shop it takes minutes and doesn’t use any “exotic” tools. Take that for what it’s worth.
I, for the most part, agree with you. However, as you stated, it’s a relatively small number of people. I can assure you, it’s really a statistically insignificant number. Even if the number doubled or tripled in size before shipping begins, you wouldn’t notice a delay. We’re talking about a couple of hundred people at most versus the thousands and thousands of orders. I wouldn’t be concerned. Although, from a… morals and honors standpoint, let’s say? It’s not ideal. However there’s a plus side. The Regulars have proven to be true community members. As such, their adventures with their Glowforge early on is a good thing for the community. We’ll all learn from their successes and their failures. They’ll do all the dirty work for us! In the end, I suggest looking at this as a positive.
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That’s right, not even noticable in the scope of mass production.
@StephAndJohn - I understand your perspective, but I have to disagree.
look back at the beginning of the forum. There were a handful of community members who were instrumental in support of the forum and spent many hours devoted to development of it. Others who joined later but made a significant contribution to the community with their time, and who displayed a sincere interest in the project’s success above and beyond the money they paid.
“because the cashier knows them” doesn’t fully describe their contributions. It’s not arbitrary.
In Dan’s position, I would have felt a desire to acknowledge their contribution also.
In the stream of mass producing thousands of units, we would be hard pressed to even discern the difference. It is really little more than a wink in the direction of those who did a lot more than just stand in line.
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From my perspective, lets take a recent use case.
The March update came to the forum. There are something like 10,000 pre-orders that would be affected by the original announcement; but only those who use the forum read the update. As a collective, we protested clearly, vocally, and with lots of personal use cases and reasons. We provided lots of ideas. We asserted our tolerances and expectations. We motivated a change of policy in fewer than 24 hours.
We (collectively as the active forum readers) made a significant contribution for the benefit of every one of the 10,000 pre-orders.
We (collectively as the active forum readers) made a significant contribution to the success of the Glowforge company. How many would truly have cancelled over this? What revenue lost?
The numbers in this reward plan… Dan suggested that the first hundred or two hundred would go to significant contributors. He also said that they have moved to the full production lines, which means that they will be able to “scale up to thousands [of units per month] starting in April.” He’s planning on shipping several thousand by July-August. 200 out of 10000 is 2%.
He has promised that your place in line is yours, “All things being equal.” He and his team think that there is some extra merit worth rewarding. And he told you how to merit that reward.
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No likes to be had. 
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BDM’s post was flagged because he misquoted someone in a way that could cause confusion, so it needed to be removed.
No, that’s not our community guidelines. Please review them and flag any post that doesn’t meet them.
Flags do not result in either hiding nor disciplinary action unless either many community members concur or I explicitly approve them.
Please flag posts freely. It helps me spot potential problems, even though I mostly dismiss them unless multiple users agree. It is actually vanishingly rare that flags are “upheld”. Yesterday, for example, was the most-flagged day in many months… with two out of nearly a thousand posts.
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If, for example, your unit is ready in May but your filter won’t be ready until July, we’ll give you the option to receive the unit immediately, or wait and have them delivered closer together. We’ll include an flexible ventilation duct with every unit. Other components are inexpensive and widely available from Amazon and local stores - there have already been a few folks posting ways to adapt a window, if one is convenient.
No, it will be included in what you already paid regardless.
Noted! we’ve got some work to do on that before we roll it out, though.
Indeed, we don’t know yet - we’ll likely send some units, see how they fare in shipping, and iterate based on what we learn.
I would say more like “because they helped build the products they are trying to puchase” given the degree of commitment and value we’ve had.
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I was thinking:
You open an art gallery, only you have no art yet. It’s just the gallery. People pay to get in on the promise of the art that will one day be there. Some of the people show up bringing chairs and tables and drinks to make the place better for both the wait and for when the art shows up. These people have shown an above and beyond commitment to the art gallery and so you offer them first dibs on the art in front of people who showed up in front of them but did nothing much but stand around or left and came back later.
Make it a grocery store, or a music shop, or a bar, or whatever; the principle is the same. Reward customers who make your business better, not just come and go.
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have you guys done any testing on the exhaust when using accordion vs smooth ducting (not that i’m at all suggesting including the latter :V)?
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Found this:
“Corrugated tubing creates three times more static-pressure resistance than the same length of smooth pipe.”
(Edit: the “three times” claim depends on how stretched out the flexible duct is. It can be much more or much less. www.mmmfg.com/pdfs/060601_cc-kw_ducttechpaper.pdf)
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Thanks for the update. Not being able to replace the tube myself at home is a let down. My question is that you said there were two options. One was the $500 round trip vacation for our GF. And the second was to just buy a tube. If we can’t replace the tube ourselves, then why would we buy a tube? Or am I missing something, like buying a new tube and having someone else replace it? I’m just confused on this part since it really only seems like one option not two.
The other question I would have is on damage that may happen durin shipments. What happens if the GF is damaged when it is sent to you, or back to use? What kind of coverage will there be? It’s one thing when we start getting the new units if something is wrong, but this will be a few years down the line.
Thanks for the information.
The sale of tubes is to allow people who are happy to replace it themselves at their own risk to do so.
Yes return shipping liability would be a nightmare. It is bad enough claiming damage to new items but with items two or more years old I don’t see how you would get a replacement if it went missing or was destroyed.
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Indeed - by designing for corrugated, we left ourselves some significant overhead.
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You will be able to replace the tube; but it will not be an easy snap-in process like they had initially expected. It will require some tools and some skills; but it can be done.
Currently, they have engineers doing the job in house.
Some owners will prefer to do it themselves, some because they have the skills, and some because they do not want to ship their machine back (various reasons.)
The details are still fairly uncertain. It seems likely that the details will not be clarified for some undetermined time; but from what I have learned about the clever, resourceful people on this forum, I am confident that there will be good reliable step-by-step instructions by the time my machine is out of warranty.
I am a confident DIY individual and in a couple years I will gladly assist neighboring GF owners that (1) don’t want to ship it back (2) don’t want to do it themselves and (3) won’t hold me liable. [I have said that I would become certified to replace tubes if the company wants to go that route, so the topic of liability may be revisited in that event.]
I expect others in other places would do the same.
I don’t know that that answers your concerns; but there are my 2 cents.
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We don’t know yet, but with parts availability, many people feel confident that they can figure out a solution. We won’t have recommendations for a while I’m afraid.
Similarly, I don’t have shipping details for tube replacement, but we’ll work to find a solution if your shipment is lost or damaged in transit, as we do for new machines.
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I think that there are more ways to support Glowforge than by simply ordering early. Glowforge did not need our money to get where they are now, as they already had fully funded the project. I would suggest that the people that are getting the perk of getting early Glowforges have helped build the community in several ways. The ideas that have been going “into the hopper” have been grown in this community, and it is the most outspoken, sharing, thoughtful members that have cultivated the experience. The end result is a much better product. Early placement in line is a small price to pay the people that have helped so much.
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lets not forget that several of the folks who might be eligible were front-of-the-line to begin with… and that they might not be able to accept shipment before the filter is available anyway.
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Funny. That was one of the resources I used when I designed our MakerSpace’s dust collection system 
Big smooth piping is the ticket.
And blast gates to block off the piping run (for our purposes best at the window end to prevent air infiltration when not in use).
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