Has anyone from the UK heard about their production unit?

Just wondering if anyonr outside of the US, specifically the UK, had heard about delivery etc?

No there have only been a few domestic customers getting delivery so far. The first production unit was delivered last Friday and some more today.

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Here’s hoping some Canadians get some love soon and all our brothers and sisters who have followed along from afar!

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They might be waiting on CSA and CE approval, who knows.

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It would be interesting to see the back label on a production Glowforge to see what approvals it has.

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Thinking I remember Dan saying about a week ago that if you needed NRTL or other approvals you could defer until they were ready.

There it is.

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I debated to have it ship to my mailbox in the States and bring it over the border. But now I’m having second thoughts because it’s huge… might not fit in my car…

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Im also waiting for more information here in the UK, be nice to know how long shipping takes from there to here and who is doing it etc

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hahaha! oh my gosh…

It’s Glowforge and the Proofgrade materials on top!

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preach!

(…or is that too much like asking for work)

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Not at all. I regularly pray for the success of the whole Glowforge endeavor. There are a lot of people needing this to succeed!

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Your efforts are much appreciated!

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I will pray to anything - just ship my Glowforge. :squeee:

I don’t think NRTL helps with CE because they only seem to test to US and Canadian standards.

I personally don’t need any approvals but theoretically it might not get through European customs without CE.

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Even if it did, if it starts a fire in your workshop/house. Your insurance company is just going to laugh at you if you try to claim.

My house is full of home made machines with no CE approval, so I assume if one burns the house down the insurance company would laugh at me anyway. I accept a certain amount of risk in life and worse case I can afford to rebuild my house assuming I survive the fire.

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Still nicer for the insurance to pay out though.:grinning:

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Just had a quick look through your Blog. I see what you mean.
Some cool stuff though.

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Yes but since a laser must be attended while it is running and I have a fire extinguisher I don’t see how it can burn my house down.

On the other hand running multiple 3D printers overnight, or even when away from home has some small risk I am willing to take.

And there are many home appliances with CE marks that burst into flames and burn peoples houses down anyway. I had a fridge nearly do that because water from defrosting got onto the PCB and caused it to burn.

I don’t have much confidence in test houses. Two cases from my professional career:

I commissioned a transformer based 500W PSU from a company and it went to a test house to get safety approval. I queried with the designer that the fuses were after the rectifier, so a rectifier fault could short the transformer. He said that would blow the primary fuse and the test house would find that during testing.

It passed with flying colours but I wasn’t convinced. I simulated one diode of the bridge on the lowest voltage secondary being shorted. This was a failure mode we occasionally saw in the field on a previous model that did have fuses before the bridges. I did it in a metal bin outside in the company car park. The result was spectacular because there wasn’t enough current to blow the primary fuse, so the transformer burst into flames and exploded. All the PSUs in the supply chain had to be reworked.

Many years later I commissioned a big switch mode supply and that went for safety approval. It failed because one of the tests they do is load it to maximum load and check the temperature of all the wound components. One choke got to within a few degrees of its maximum temperature rating but they failed it because their measurement uncertainly was more than the margin. I.e. it only failed due to their lack of accurate temperature measurement, not because there was actually anything wrong with it.

So having safety approvals only adds a bit of confidence, it doesn’t actually mean something is safe.

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