Australia has very strict laser laws, you cannot even buy a laser pointer here.
The only way Glowforge would be able to ship is if they get the Class 0/1 laser certification, Glowforge has not confirmed but I suspect this is why they still can’t ship to Australia.
To ship a replacement laser the importer needs to be certified to purchase and handle lasers. This is why I said I would wait until there is a distributor/repair facility in Australia.
But you can get K40s shipped and they have no certifications or any sort of safety machanisms - they’re Class 4 machines so someone doesn’t look too closely. Apparently all it takes is a fake label to get past customs.
Seems GF is getting screwed by trying to be legit. And their customers as well.
Dan how come my delivery ( to Saudi Arabia ) just got pushed to February from November this is just insane I’m loosing hope and it seems like it’s gonna be like this for ever. I love the Glowforge and can’t wait to use it but have been waiting for 3 years. Please please give us an explanation about why it’s late specifically for ME customers because I know ( from the government ) that there is minimal restrictions and rules ( very basic ) regarding laser engraving machines. We are not canada, so please give us a reasonable justification and thank you
It feels like no one is reading our comments here from the Glowforge team and this is probably why they separated the international discussion from the regular update discussion. I wish that Dan and the team will come out honestly and say looks for country X we did this for country Y we did that and for country Z we did nothing yet
i’m not going to say they’re not reading them. i will say they’re unlikely to reply beyond telling you what they’ve said repeatedly for more than a year, that they don’t give out specific information and that your date is their best guess at the moment. they’ve never said more, they’ve always declined to give more info, and i think that at this point they’re just declining to respond to the same repeated questions. what’s in the update is what they’re willing to say.
it sucks for anyone still waiting, but that’s been the MO since the beginning. expecting it to change now will do nothing but disappoint you more than you already are.
They generally only closely monitor the Announcement threads for a couple of days after the announcement is posted. So that’s correct, they likely have not seen the later comments.
I’ve been keeping an eye on this thread to try and find questions I can answer - right now I don’t have specifics on logistics & compliance status per-country.
How can you not have specifics?
It’s kind of another excuse to get away from the frustration and anger of your customer is it?
3 years time, you and your team should have more than enough time to work on the logistic and compliance. I worked in manufacturing before, and how things are coming out from your business now doesn’t make any sense.
Just be honest with how your team haven’t done anything for the international customers’ orders, as international customers aren’t as important as the ones in US. Isn’t that simple?
If your team puts more time trying to market it or to find partners to do business with, maybe put more time into handling your existing customers frustration and anger first, like be serious in dealing with logistic and compliance for all your international customers, find two or three more factories oversea to help produce it faster if that two factories you have doesn’t produce fast enough as they are suppose to.
I completely echo what you’re saying Pete. I’m in the same boat. It was so tantalisingly close this time too that I’d been busily building a custom workbench with material drawers to be ready for it’s delivery mid-October. This is a pretty hefty blow to a Glowforger that has also been on the list since the earliest of days.
Yeah I’m not so sure about that. But anyhow I have friends that run a 3D printing and laser cutting parts and services business who’d be more than happy to become the local servicers for GlowForge in Australia if you’re interested @dan.
In fact there are a couple of local businesses I can see that would be a good fit for supplying material too here and partnering. Happy to put people in touch with the Glowforge team if that’s of use.
I’ll have enough to buy a second Glowforge at this rate.
Dan, I’ve ordered my GF basic + filter in Oct 2015, 3 years for this now and my unit was supposed to be delivered by May and probably received in Jul 2018 this year. However. Checking my account and now you pushed back my unit to Feb 2019 and filter in end march 2019.
It’s unfathomable why the delay and I have people in the part of Asia receiving their units.
With lots of anticipation for my cutting edge GF as early adopters purchase, which now seems to be a dated product where it’s mainstream and used by those whom placed the order it so much than I did.
Where I am staying is a developed country and I don’t think you have issues to ship from where you are.
Hope I could get a satisfactory answer to why the delay.
australia’s laws aren’t that tight. i work in two separate industries, retail and industrial. we sell laser products in both. laser pointers can be bought and sold here in NSW, and are often class 1, but the laser measures are class 2. pretty sure the Chinese laser cutter a mate owns is at least class 3, as laser engraving starts at class 3. laser cutting is usually class 4 laser.
http://www.lasersafetyfacts.com/laserclasses.html
Dan, maybe you could bring these questions forward to someone who can answer them? Who is running this company? He/she needs to step up to the plate here and explain some things.
While on the laser side of things it may not be that big of an issue, the USA standards are not the same as AS/NZS and AS standards, and it may be that this is where the delay is really happening.
In my work we have had clients bring in European and US made equipment only to have to rewire half of it to comply with NZ regulations (AS/NZS standards). As best I can tell, if it plugs directly in to the wall, it has to comply with AS/NZS standards. Typically “equivalencies” are not accepted, although I think there are some certification process that can be undertaken to gain compliance.
Anyway, I think this could be the reason for such a painful delay!
We had some lively debate, back when everyone was still waiting, about whether it’s better to say nothing or to give detailed updates. I tend to think full transparency is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean I’m right. Somewhere along the way, we got the system that provides everyone with an estimated date, instead of hearing about the delays the day before they were supposed to ship. That was sort of a “victory” for the transparency advocates, and also a lesson: it didn’t make anyone less angry or frustrated. Maybe it made things worse, it’s hard to tell.
Now I still think it would be better to tell you why shipping to your country is delayed. But just as a thought experiment, let’s say Dan came out and said “we filed paperwork with the regulatory agency back in January, and it took them until August to get back to us. They said we need to replace the fasteners on the case with special security screws and resubmit the application. Meanwhile, the one approved vendor of the screws is having trouble shipping enough of them to the factory in China. When we get that straightened out, and after another regulatory review (timeframe unknown but probably at least 6 months again), we can probably start shipping”. Would that help anything? Would you then sit patiently, or get even more annoyed?
I’m certainly glad that I have had my GF for over a year, but feel bad for the people still waiting. If I was still waiting I would like to hear about what the hold up is. Maybe not to the exact detail as you provided in your example but I would still like to know a little bit about it so that I felt that GF was working on it. Not hearing anything could give the impression that nothing is being done or that it isn’t that important.
I think a big part of the need for transparency is that there is a third option, which is to make the decision to cancel. How do they make an informed decision when they have no information? A “delivery date” that moves ten or fifteen times does not constitute information.
Fair point. I can see how knowing what’s holding it up could affect that decision.
The last part of my previous comment was a bit rushed since I wrote it as my train was pulling in to the station. The point I wanted to make is that it’s not necessarily obvious that the outcome of providing these details increases net happiness. A lot of what we experience while waiting is frustration at not being in control. For a lot of people it would change the specifics of the complaints, so now instead of being angry at not being told why the date changed, we’d be angry that Glowforge didn’t anticipate this problem earlier or at the way they’re handling it
I’ve seen many Kickstarter projects go exactly this way. They delay shipping and post a detailed description of their testing that shows a 4% chance of burning your house down, along with the plan to redesign the battery charger, and people are still livid that they’re not getting what was promised. Or just look at the latest air filter thread. I’m super glad Dan explained about the injection molding problems, but that didn’t prevent the shouts of “I’ve waited TWO YEARS! MY BUSINESS IS RUINED!”
It’s entirely true that Glowforge could demonstrate good faith and responsible stewardship of their commitments to customers, and someone would likely still say “curse you, I quit my job because I thought it would be here earlier!” That does not strike me as a good reason for Glowforge to not demonstrate good faith and responsible stewardship.