Glowforge Basic Vs 60w eBay laser

That is correct.

If final QC takes a week they would need to have about 700 in QC at a time. Just think of the infrastructure needed to run that many machines. So that would be a huge bottle neck.

Final QC checks do not always mean electrical tests. My guess is there are in process QC checks that would make them redundant.

I believe flex is AS9100 certified, so there QMS policies should be fairly robust. Therefore, my guess is final QC will take 1-3 days, depending on the sample rates. Paperwork, packaging, and shipping will take another 2-3 days.

You may be right, IF the Glowforge delivers all the things they promised it would then it probably will be better than an import but currently I can do all the same things, all be it with a little more effort.

90% of the effort is still in the design work so the amount of difference the laser makes is minimal.

7 Likes

If that is the case I think it will simply be impossible to make 100 per day that is needed to meet the schedule.

1 Like

There are some things you won’t be able to do. For example, the precision power low power levels are things that the experienced laser users seemed to think were impossible. I remember some saying that CO2 lasers wouldn’t fire at below 15% power. So engraving paper…probably not on the eBay laser.

IANACLO (I am not a current laser owner) so I am sure I will get corrected if I am wrong :slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

Cutting sticky labels off their backings, that level of power control is perfectly possible with the cheapest of Chinese machines

4 Likes

If you are assuming serial processing, you would be right.

So if you need to make 100 per day but each machine takes 5 days then you have 500 in work in progress. Does that seem practical?

I think I’ll clarify my statements. Once again, I’ll caveat this with this being my opinions/guesses.

I think Glowforge is doing lot processing. I think emails go out when a lot goes into final QC. My guess is there is an expected failure rate, let’s assume 10%. So, if the lot size is 100, 90 emails would go out. If more fail then expected, then yours might take longer to ship. If less fail, them more emails will go out. I think that final QC for each lot will take about 1-3 days, including sampling for electrical testing/functional testing/whatever. I think paperwork/packaging/shipping will take another 2-3 days. This does not necessarily mean a week of touch time though, or that only one lot is being processed at once.

That’s just my thoughts on how I think they are being processed. I could be wrong, they could be doing it different, I don’t know. They could be doing each one individually. There are ways of processing that relatively quickly, but I’d imagine the paperwork would increase.

3 Likes