Omg the first train one would have actually had to have been filmed with a real train and a guy actually flicking timbers… How did anyone survive back then.
5 Likes
Yes but 51 units is nothing out of the many thousands they need to make over 30 days to be on schedule.
1 Like
But I as I stated in in my first post, in marketing as a general rule of thumb, we assume we only hear from 10% of the people having issues and 10% having great success. Therefore, I would assume we are only hearing from 10% of the people needing their unit replaced. (and on the other end of the spectrum we are only hearing from 10% of the people who have gotten their glowforges).
If you don’t want to use the 10% marketing rule, there were 24 posts about people receiving a unit in the past week on FB. That would mean half of units received are damaged in shipping and need replacing. That’s a horrible rate for any company. You have to assume there are more GF units in the wild that we think. If not, the GF team seriously needs to rethink their shipping methods and packaging.
I’m not saying that they are producing thousands a day, or hundreds a day. And I’m not saying I think they are going to make their deadline and I don’t think I’m going to get mine by the deadline. I was pointing out that there are a bunch of units being replaced that have to be slowing things down more than they expected.
1 Like
From everything that I have been seeing and hearing I have to agree with @jeffarazzi. The problem is that too many are being damaged in shipping. Even if they are only having to replace 10% of unites due to damage in shipping that is still a HUGE set back, and my guess from things are that 10% loss from shipping damage is a not even close to how bad it really is. I also feel like I should add that I work in IT and we have to ship PCs and servers regularly and even with great packaging we have problems with almost half of the things sent. (normally just a card or cable that needs to be re-seated)
Yes 10% would be a ridiculous amount of damage. But they have had two years to throw Glowforges around and see what breaks. And they even said that is what they were doing more than a year ago IIRC. They also talked about having experts design the cooling system and later that they were doing extensive environmental testing. How did they miss the fact that the cooling system and packaging are totally inadequate?
I don’t think they actually have backed off dispatching. They seem to have constantly shipped at a low rate and sent emails until they start getting close to the six week lead time and then backed off the emails to allow dispatches to catch up.
Regardless they still say they will all be shipped in October, which at this point must be a lie.
1 Like
Could be, all we can do is wait and see. I do wish however that people who worked for shipping companies would take a little more pride in what they do and try not to destroy the packages they are delivering.
I think it is due to the size and weight. I sent hundreds of 3D printer kits around the world using UPS with very little damage. They only weighed 10kg and were about 52cm x 46cm x 17cm, so easily for one person to pick up and carry. A glowforge needs two people but UPS only use one.
Has anyone attempted to correlate delivered Glowforges’ serial numbers to get a sense of where they are. I’m sure someone can decipher them, but do the correspond to date finished with manufacturing? Might give us a sense of things.
2 Likes
That would be a great addition to the spreadsheet.
Totally. Maybe someone can find the Equifax data for sale as well and include that.
7 Likes
I doubt they are truly serial. That would be a major faux pas on GF’s part if they were.
Nothing tells production numbers like sequential serial numbers.
4 Likes
That is too funny if it wasn’t actually very sad. 
1 Like