Growing up

We’ll find out soon. I live in the USVI ie: a US Territory and a USPS destination. However unlike Puerto Rico (less than 60 miles away) UPS, FEDEX, DHL consider us International. As a result we drop-ship to Miami and take delivery in St. Croix/St. Thomas/St. John. This still is cheaper than using UPS, etc. However its not covered when it leaves the drop-shipper and if its broken its on me… The same applies if it fails during the warranty period.

And mines on its way, Pro…

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Yes just back from a month there, which was great. Also spent a month there in 2004 and that was probably our best holiday.

I am no longer exited to receive one. Its isn’t the wonder machine advertised, it is a basic laser cutter in a nice box with a lot of bugs. I will probably opt to wait for the software to be finished, which I don’t think will ever happen. If by some miracle they get it working as advertised and it becomes reliable I would accept it but I don’t think that will ever happen.

I don’t have any numbers but I know for sure less that 10000 have shipped and I see warranty returns every day. I designed products of similar value that were produced in much larger numbers and if they had to be shipped back to the factory every day I would probably have been sacked.

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So, this sounds like a great business opportunity for you then! Congrats!

Thanks. Can you tell me how you arrived at that number? Can you tell me how many less than 10,000 that is?

When you say the number about warranty returns, is that one a day since they began shipping?

If that is what you have recorded from the forum reports (the only way I know of arriving at those figures), then that must be somewhere around 240 units you have recorded or noted or observed as being returned.

If that is the case, and your research/data states that about 10.000 units have been shipped to date, then there has been a warranty return rate of about 2.4% – or a delivery rate of successful units at 97.6%. Is that what you have gathered from your research and observation of the Problems and Support forum category?

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The original sales figure was widely assumed to be around 10,000. Of those 20% were overseas, so that drops it to 8000 and I think a signifiant number have cancelled, so say 7000 domestic orders left . Of those not all have been delivered yet even if GF call them “shipped”. So yes I can confidently say a lot less than 10000 have been delivered. A guess would be more like 5000. Happy to be corrected with real figures but we will probably never see those.

So I think more like 5% failure rate . Although that is just a wild guess it is all I have to base my decision to accept it on. That is about 10 times more than I would expect to see for something like this.

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You need to modify one of those assumptions. There is at least one person who ordered a Pro in 2017 who has already received it. So we can assume that all of the original pros have been delivered and then some. And ‘the spreadsheet’ shows they are very close on closing out the basics. People past the original campaign have started to get emails.

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The spreadsheet shows a lot of people have got the email but have not received it yet. I don’t know if that is because people have stopped filling it in or not. It has always been the case that machines are not shipped in strict order.

According to ‘the spreadsheet’, given the number of pros that have been delivered that were ordered after the initial campaign, I’d say it’s clear that people have stopped filling it in. YMMV. As to Basics, my post above yours was modified (due to me double checking my assumptions) as to the state of basic shipping according to the spreadsheet while you were composing and posting your reply. Apologies for any crossed wires.

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…there’s also the option of they chose to not take delivery at this time. That’s not on GF.

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I’m sure the 2.4% of International buyers that have to spend $2000 on round trip shipping for warranty work will be pleased to know that you feel the return rate is acceptable.

I believe the return figures are much higher. Dan has stated it as high as a week’s production.

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Possibly, but since we don’t actually know the total produced, any supposition is just a guess. :smirk:

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Yes but how else do you make an intelligent decision about whether to accept it or not?

I think the answer is… Even in your guesswork only 5% need to be returned. So looking at the worst-case scenario, you’ve only got a 5% chance of getting a defective unit. Now… I’m not sure why anybody’d choose the considerably-less-significant value to look at, so let’s look at it from the majority side… You’re practically guaranteed a fully-functioning unit. By your figures, you’ve got a 95% chance of that! Let’s face it… If somebody told you have got a 95% chance of winning the lottery today, you’d play.

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I think dan made that statement about a month ago. Assuming they have been in production for about 6 months at that time call it 26 weeks. (1 week bad) / (26 weeks total production) = 3.8% return rate. Your assumptions may vary.

But that return rate includes DOA machines, or machines that obvious defects like detached glass or handles. It does not represent return rate due to warranty work required, which is the real issue. So we have to be real careful in the numbers used and what they need to represent.

The issue of identifying machines that can’t cut/score/engrave right across the entire bed even though the machines look fine when received is a real one. A set of tests for this is needed, so that people can return these machines and have GF pay shipping.

It seems to me the number of machines that ‘go bad’ after they have been working right is small. But that’s an anecdotal feeling. Getting a good measure of that would really help people make the right decision for themselves.

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It isn’t a 95% chance of winning anything. It is 95% chance of getting something I already paid for and a 5% chance of paying another $1000 to get it.

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If im not mistaken, you would need to pay for shipping in both directions. Doesn’t the warranty state you have to ship it back at your expense, with prepaid return (to you) shipping?

Yes shipping to the UK is just under $500 one way for the GF and nearly the same again for the filter. I am assuming only one would need returning.

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@palmercr From how active you are in the forum I had assumed you already have your unit… sorry to hear otherwise.

I think the argument, in essence, boils down to every individual buyer’s will to take a risk. that has always been -and still is- true about all of us buyers, for international buyers it’s just a bigger risk.
personally, after having to replace the first unit I got my GF finally chooching (which included a few trips Canada-USA). I started burning a few projects, I see the potential and am excited about the possibilities.
But I also see the issues:
the App is extremely basic right now. many basic functions that are present in virtually any graphic program, and that you intuitively believe will work are just not present (few examples: if you have multiple artworks, selecting the right one is complicated, no alignments, I don’t think you can rotate artwork, and more).
first time I proudly uploaded my first design I was greeted by 3 or 4 red windows (no clip path, no text support, and I forget what else).
Alignment on my machine is off. yes, it might be usually within 1/4" or so, so it might be within spec. but how does that help me? if I need to create an jig or template, it might as well be off 5". the whole drag and drop was to me a big selling point, if not the biggest (apart from price).
now you have to adapt your workflow to fit the machine, as opposed to the other way around.

auto-focus relies on you measuring the material and entering the dimension in app, and even FP material needs to be double checked, so there might as well be no focus.

and continuous focus will never happen: I’m willing to bet money with anyone on this forum that follow focus is just never going to happen with the units we have at home. definitely not the way it was portrayed in the fundraiser demo, and almost certainly not any other reliable way. the only possible way with our units would be if the GF actually scans the material entirely before cutting, takes a picture of every scan (hundreds of them) and uploads it to the cloud, does the math etc. but since the whole process relies on a wide angle camera that cannot be user-calibrated taking a picture of a skewed laser point over one of 100s possible materials, it is inherently flawed, in my humble opinion. (hopefully dan and other engineers at GF are geniuses and can pull it off, then I’ll eat my words.)

so it’s not a bed of roses, it’s a tool with a learning curve, with limitation and possibilities.

I’ll end up with a question for those who already received their units:

knowing now what the GF can do, if you had received the gf free to try but today had to decide between returning it or keeping it but pay full price: what would you do?

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I think you are right there. I don’t think it will every follow a curve on the edge of a laptop, etc for a couple of reasons.

  1. it measures the height by looking at a laser spot with a high res camera. That is quite big so it must calculate the centre of a lot of camera pixels. If the spot is shining on a curve you can’t use the centre of the spot as it will be elongated on one side compared to the other. So how it can measure height to 0.1mm on a curve , I have no idea.

  2. The focus lens steps in 0.7mm units. That seems way too course to not cause visible discontinuities.

Not to mention processing video in real time.

Man, I would love to spend a month in New Zealand! Not just for the landscape, but for the southern stars too.