Is this the first “Damaged in transit” we have seen? I think it is the first I’ve seen
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First damage in shipping I’ve heard of. I don’t even want to think about how mishandled it was to crack the laser tube inside all that packing and the case. I hope Glowforge shows the strength of their support now. Let’s get the replacement out quickly.
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Seriously, I can’t imagine Glowforge could have done a better job ensuring safe delivery. UPS, on the other hand, seems to throw these things.
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Oh, I’ve seen enough pictures of the packaging to know that Glowforge has done more than their due diligence in the packaging for protecting our lasers. I don’t know about throwing. The box is 70#, after all. I sure they drop, slide, push, sometimes kick, maybe step on, twist, spindle, mutilate, and maul, though.
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It looks like an area of the tube where stress could build up during manufacture, so it might not have been a massive shock from UPS. It could even be vibration in a truck. I.e. it might be more a tube manufacturing defect than a shipping fail.
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That sucks, I’m really sorry for you. Please post to let us know how the replacement process goes.
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Certainly possible. Can’t rule out a defect. But so far the percentage of reports of poor shipping, including from myself, is rather high. Shaving with Occam’s razor this morning, I’m betting on shipping, while accepting the possibility it’s a defective tube.
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It could well be but the packaging must be designed to allow it to be dropped from a certain height without breaking the tube or else many would get broken. Given it needs two people to carry it safely but UPS only ever use one it is going to be dragged around on its end and could easily fall over. Also it could easily be dropped from tailgate height onto tarmac.
When they start going by air it might get dropped from cargo hold door height onto tarmac. I have seen that happen with suitcases.
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Better to be shaving with it than slashed by it.
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Clever. 
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But there’s no damage vector to explain that if the rest of the machine isn’t tweaked as well. Occam’s razor in this case argues for manufacturing defect (weakness in the glass envelope) vs. some convoluted handling that allowed this one to break but not all the others we’ve seen with damaged packaging.
It’s the holes-in-the-wings-of-returning-bombers thing - we know what it can go through and not be damaged, thus it’s not likely that same treatment caused this damage. Thus it is likely that more arcane handling caused it…or it was simply a glass production issue.
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I never said it was the same treatment. Hypothetically this was different treatment which resulted in cracking a tube. We haven’t seen the same exact poor treatment across the board. Just a high percentage of poor treatment in general.
I’ve dropped my cellphones several times over the years. Sometimes on carpet. Sometimes on concrete. Never broke a single screen. Others, however, drop theirs once and their screen is shattered. The condition exists where one can drop something and it won’t break as well as dropping it and it will break.
Again, I’m not excluding the possibility of a manf flaw.
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Because of the stress embedded in the glass and the impact angle that releases the stress - usually corners btw.
But that’s my point. Occam’s razor requires that the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions is the one selected for pursuit. Or in other words, the simplest explanation vs the one requiring multiple or complex scenarios to satisfy.
The cause that satisfies Occam’s razor is manufacturing defect because the alternative is that the handling we’ve seen that has not heretofore caused damage did in this case or that some new handling mishap that has not been seen to cause damage is responsible. the latter explanations are more complex or require more things to occur (or assumptions). 
Not saying you’re wrong about the cause. Just that applying Occam’s razor suggests an alternative.
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Since we’ve never seen such a defect but we have seen mistreatment, I suggest that mistreatment is more-likely, therefore satisfying Occam’s razor.
Eh, it suggests the opposite. We have seen mistreatment but we have never seen a broken tube despite mistreatment, so a logical explanation is this tube might be different .
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Could stress be transferred to the laser tube by twisting the ends in opposite directions? I would think that torqued enough, that could possibly apply significant pressure to the interior structure, certainly enough to crack an interior glass tube. Single person manhandling, or poorly mismanaged two-person could certainly torque the box ends in opposite directions.
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…or that the mistreatment was different.
To be clear… I’m just havin’ fun bantering here. I don’t know what caused the problem. I just know it happened and I feel lousy for the poor @Jerware. I have some idea what it feels like when my beautiful Korg Kronos arrived and failed to boot. It’s a pretty horrible feeling.
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Actually you’re treading close to Popper’s falsificationism.
I do enjoy John Popper’s harmonica playin’.
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