It has been like that since June. You should have got this in an email: Email update June 2017: Glowforge shipments underway, schedule update, and more - #4 by dan
Hello, I write from Spain. Just to give them encouragement, since I’m sure it will be the last one to reach him. Making calculations and if they meet the deadlines for the first time I think my GF will arrive on october 31 and I will receive my email 6 weeks before = Friday, September 15th. Two long years waiting, more of 700 days.http://gph.is/2dyBbJz
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Since Glowforge count sending an email as “shipping” I think “shipped by October 31” only means you get the email offer by then. The machine could arrive up to six weeks later.
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Ugh, details… so much for a happy Halloween.
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or it could arrive a week later. hard to know at this point. i mean, halloween is practically three months away, not much worth in inviting misery so soon!
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I have a lot of things to use the Glowforge for this Halloween. Last year I did it on the K40, it’s just such a pain, and not very good.
yeah, i have plans, too. i’m not counting on it being here since it’s international but i’m still planning just in case. last year everyone loved the projector so i want to do something creepy this time around.
Not made on a Glowforge, but cut on a laser. 1/8 non proofgrade, Lowes Luan plywood. Lots of extra glue in the layers, I occasionally needed the bandsaw to finish the cuts in a few spots.
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Except the announcement says “your Glowforge may arrive any time between now and October 31st” so it should ship sooner. However, the syntax parser in me says the may portion of the statement is controlling and carries the corollary of “or may not”.
And I think @Dan has already signaled that internationals may well be slipping.
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it wouldn’t surprise me. i think it’s mostly that production and shipping QA hasn’t been where it needs to be for them to mass produce, so there’s no point in trying to ship internationally.
i mean, i don’t want to minimize the difficulties involved in shipping like that, but it’s also not the end of the world hard, either.
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yeah I got it must have been in denial oh well given them 1 week for shipping from the day it leaves the factory and they had better be pumping out 200 units a week. That assume next week is the first week a pro arrives. just guessing which I hate because Glowforge could say that as of last week xxx units have shipped but no they wont do it who knows why people have waited for two years you think they would give the people who bought a unit some credit for patients… oh well …
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No they wont reveal how many they have shipped because that would show how far behind they are. They will wait until after it is obvious they won’t meet the schedule and then announce another delay when they have some positive news to counter it.
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Yep, sadly I agree this is the established pattern, which I hate more than the delay itself.
It just seems unnecessarily duplicitous. Why can’t they just: get 4-5 damaged units; pull the plug on mass production make an announcement to let us all know they’ve had damaged units arrive with unhappy customers; announce they’ll replace broken units and investigate; announce new, amazing packaging and a limited trial to make sure this works; announce the results of that trial too. This way we know what’s going on, we can empathise, agree it’s better to not be shipping borked units, have plenty of patience in the knowledge it’s sensible and honest, and stop getting excited for a delivery which was never going to be on time after they had 4-5 damaged units arrive WAY back in June?
It just seems to be the WORST way of handling the situation. GF do so many things right but the way they communicate with their customers SUCKS (ed- OK, maybe that’s harsh. I think the communication of delays needs a) careful re-evaluation and b) a little bit more faith in customers who have already waited for 2 years and won’t run for the hills at the sign of another delay but really would appreciate a bit of honesty) .
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this is mostly a sign of growing pains with a young company. i agree, it’s frustrating, but from their point of view it’s really a fleeting issue, and i can understand not wanting to give ammo to companies like full spectrum, which have already run with the delays and told lies about the company.
i feel like there’s really no good options that will make everyone happy.
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OK, see my ed.
Hard for Full Spectrum to run with a story when your customers shrug and say ‘well, I don’t want a broken unit and they’re working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen to me, hence the delay… so back off’. Hard for us to do that when we’re in the dark. Just makes us feel stupid for sticking with a company who won’t even be honest enough to admit to us that something’s wrong. I see how good the instrument is, the question I’m asking myself is do I want a lasting relationship with a company who doesn’t want to be open and honest with me? I’m just waiting to get mugged over. THAT’s the feeling Full Spectrum et al want. I guess I’d just rather GF cared more about what we think and less what Full Sprectum think, after all it’s our money they have, and we’ve stuck by them so far.
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They could repeat this pattern of send a few out, see how many arrive broken, iterate the packaging and or design ad infinitum. We can see that the turnaround to make a change is about 1 month so it could take many months or years to get to say 99.9% success rate.
What happened to testing in the lab? They could have found all the fragilities by testing to destruction as they implied they were doing something like a year ago.
At some point they need to bite the bullet and ship them, knowing they will have to replace a considerable number and take the hit.
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I agree this is a pattern. I would rather see openness and timely updates on the first on the month. If something changes radically then a followup email. The more communication the better but that’s just me. I know what I signed up for and delays do not upset me as long as they’re backed with details. I don’t want a broken or buggy unit. Bad news is better than no news.
Based on other posts, some people are completely the opposite. They’ve bet business plans and lively hood around the GF. Lets just leave it at that 
(rant deleted)
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I guess it just depends on what the current stats are: if they’re like 40% failure then I don’t blame them for pulling the plug and saying ‘we can do better than that’. That number might be pretty damaging to company finances too. But yeh, you would have thought a shipping specialist would have given it a good kicking and gone ‘…nope not gonna fly (pardon the pun)’.
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Dan has said the success rate is 95%. We have seen a slightly lower one on the forum but not as low as 60%, probably in the low 90s.
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Blaming it on the packaging made sense for a short time, but I don’t think that can explain the magnitude of the problem anymore. I would have guessed there is some other manufacturing/quality defect that is causing a large number of failures or returns, but if that were the case I’d expect to see more of it on the forum. But as I’ve said before, you can either communicate with people or they will start to freewheel speculate… the longer it goes on, the more crazy conspiracy theories start to dominate. I do have a realistic guess, which is a part shortage or low yield/high failure rate at the factory. If they’re forced to call China every day asking where the hell those tubes are, or throw away or rework a significant number of boards, or tediously hand assemble and test something that’s meant to be cranked out at high speed, it could result in exactly this situation, where the plan was to produce hundreds of units a week and you technically have the capacity to do so, but you’re lucky to get 5 working ones.
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