Geekwire article

In regards to the ship date, I think I did what a lot of people did when ordering the Glowforge. I saw a really cool product at a really cool price and didn’t pay enough attention to the actual ship date. I saw shipping starting in December, and my overly excited brain at the time thought " It’ll arrive by December! Woo Hoo!" After reality set in once I started reading the community posts, I was a bit bummed, but I also realized that I had misunderstood the ship date when I had originally purchased. In other words, my fault for misunderstanding, not Glowforge’s fault for misrepresenting. In the end, I can patiently wait for a really cool product.

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I am hoping for June, but we’ll see what reality holds. This is Earth, thereby requiring us to put that little piece of rubber on the end of a pencil.
“The best laid plans of mice and men…”

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lol, I’m a CPA…no Union for us :frowning:
then again, with a name like mine… hahhaha

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lol. . . I was a CA (Canada’s CPA’s in the day) before I retired. As CA’s, we were not allowed to be firecrackers. :laughing:

I would much rather that they ship late, in order to have the full 6 months of Beta Testing that their original plan called for rather than cut the Beta Testing short.

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Thank you for the info on the article @dan - I believe the new piece of information is the fact that the Beta units have indeed not shipped. Here are my questions:

  1. Do you have a new estimated ship date for the betas?
  2. You believe that the June deadline can still be met, assuming no unforeseen problems. If problems do arise, will you be transparent with what the problem is, and what the new expected that is?
  3. What portions of the design are still in flux that caused the beta delay?

Thanks for being open to answering questions.

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A few things to keep in mind, from an eternal optimist’s perspective:
The June 30 target is when they plan to have already shipped roughly 10,000 Glowforges.
Given that these things will be in very large boxes, it is also safe to assume that they will not be assembling and packaging all 10,000 of them before they ship the first one. I suspect they will be shipping them as they put them together and get them sealed in boxes.
It has also been stated that the production shipping ramp-up will be a phased roll-out with a feedback loop to help improve on logistics etc…
These logistical realities imply that in order to get all of the pre-October 24 orders shipped by the end of June, the first units off the line will likely need to ship no later than early May, which works out to an average of about 160 per day.

Another thing to keep in mind for those of you that didn’t get your orders in before 10/24: if they finish shipping the last of those early pre-order units before the end of June, they are not likely to stop the production lines and wait until July 1 to ship the next one!

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Why do you say the betas “Haven’t shipped”? I haven’t seen any comments on the betas but based on everything I’ve seen in believe they are out. Unless i hear otherwise from Dans mouth, you wont convince me otherwise.

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My worry with Glowforge is that they aren’t particularly working with any transparency. All of the crowdfunded companies that appeal greatest to me post at least monthly status updates, including known challenges, issues and milestones.

For us, we get a link to a press article. I feel unloved.

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OK… I’d like to be educated by any business majors among the brethren. If, optimistically the hardware is declared done by the end of March, in order to meet the first batch deliveries ( 28 Million/2800= 10,000 seems plausible) and assuming June means last day of June, they have to make and ship 110 per day or 150 per workday.Do they set up to achieve this rate, and what happens if after the surge the steady state rate is much less. What are the costs of scaling up and down. I presume that this is exactly what you guys study.

For updates, I am not surprised they haven’t been too transparent. Yes, it’s a little worrying, but it’s a competitive world out there and with all that happened with the race to the 3D printers I don’t blame them for they way they are approaching this. With that said, I wouldn’t mind some updates. Have faith in the GF team. :slightly_smiling:

The assembly will not be performed by the Glowforge folks in Seattle. My uninformed guess is a contracted overseas assembly line.

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@tbelhumer
If you read the article, @dan mentions that the betas were delayed because of improvements that the team decided to implement prior to getting them to public places.

See this partial quote:
As far as the initial shipments scheduled for December that have yet to be delivered, Shapiro said “I wish we were further along with that.”

I really want my glowforge, and I hope it be shipped by June… HOPE is here if you take care of us (keep us informed with real time infos good or bad), and support us in the future, it will be a great adventure for everyone…! I really would love it asap but good things happens only to who knows how to wait…

I like the idea of getting an amazing product late rather than a half ass product fast.

That said I guessed delivery in q3 2016 when I spoke with my wife about the order so anything before september 2016 is good for me. :slight_smile:

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If you are able to ship the last pre-order campaign units by june that’s great!
But when do you expect the first non beta units will start shipping?
I imagine producing that many units will take some time :slightly_smiling:

@dan, It would be great to hear from you directly…are Beta machines out or not? It’s a simple question.

" But the good news is that we’re making beautiful projects with the beta Glowforges every day. "
-Tony

The Tony quote does not specify if there are Beta in public hands.

The earlier article with an interview of Dan said that they identified some changes that were needed with the parts they had on hand, and that sending out Beta units was delayed, since any feedback on the configuration would not be worthwhile feedback.

And it is not a simple question. Sure, the answer is yes or no. But people will hear a LOT more than that if a simple one word answer is handed out, and will immediately clamor for added information.

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The interview with Tony was very informative. The other founders have had a lower profile that ‘The Dan’.
I’m willing to settle for last day of June.