I agree and wonder why that if those out here complaining and know (think they know what the company is doing and how they are doing it) they didn’t start their own company if they think they can do it better, after all they have the supposed knowledge and authority. Any intelligent person should have known that a startup company will have issues and it will take time to get all the bugs worked out. There is noway they could have thought of everything, so instead of playing armchair CEO either be patient or go spend tens of thousands of dollars and get a laser that do what you want now. I’m pretty sure Microsoft, Apple, Google and the others had issues, in fact they still do. Oh, and one last thing, no one forced you into buying it.
3 Likes
This is the case eventually. But in a startup, until the personnel can be added to support all those separate operations (and even adding personnel too quickly screws things up) the same people are often doing all of the above. Add to that the guy writing the code still has to take time out to tell the communications guy what he’s doing so they can communicate it, and educate the support staff on the updates so they can support it, etc. It all still takes time from the devolopers, who (LOTS of painful experience here!) can either develop, or tell people what they’re developing, but doing both takes twice as long.
3 Likes
Nowhere in there does it say it’s necessary for the beta feature to roll out to every single existing GF in order to perfect the Pro Passthrough software. Logically, whatever it is they need to test “in the wild” to move forward with the Pro software only needs a finite number of “guinea pig” machines to support it.
I’m not saying I’m against having everyone get to enjoy snapmarks. I’m just tired of all the entitled ranting about not being included in the “guinea pig” pool, when inclusion was never promised to begin with, and might just slow down the release of whatever is coming that will be even better (at least for those with pro models) than snapmarks.
I’m also fervently hoping that they don’t get so sick and tired of the griping that they decide to just kill the whole snapmarks idea when they don’t need it for testing any more, because I don’t have a pro. 
4 Likes
That’s a specious argument. Many have in fact started & run their own company. They didn’t start a laser company but that doesn’t mean they don’t have expertise compatible with being able to do it successfully, just lack of interest in that vs whatever they did start.
GF is 5 (!) years old. In Internet time they’re elders. Just look at some of the hardware choices (I’m looking at you 2.4ghz wifi board & antenna). Age has not treated some choices well.
Nor is arguing that they have failed to deliver (fact) or that one is disappointed with that failure a valid reason to suggest that the buyer is wrong and should go buy a different more expensive machine. They’re simply reflecting honest feelings of how broken promises have affected them. That those promises may someday down the road be fulfilled does not obviate the truth that they have not been delivered at this time.
The Stockholm Syndrome exhibited when attempting to argue that a partial solution equates to fulfillment or the promise of potentially delivering is the same as delivering is no less evident here than at places like Tesla.
I’m not going to tell Dan how to run the company or what decisions he should be making or how he should design anything. It’s his company and his knowledge of details I’m not privy to. But I’ll not recommend it to someone who needs to know it will turn on & just work when it did just that yesterday. Nor would I recommend anyone base a commercial enterprise on needing their laser to be operational on their schedule - too much is outside our control and support is not Internet-time fast or available from multiple sources.
I love my GF. I rarely use the Redsail because I don’t have to and prefer the GF for a lot of reasons. But while the GF has failed me multiple times, the Redsail has not. If I were running a business you can be certain my projects would be optimized for the red box not the white one.
I also genuinely like everyone at GF I’ve ever interacted with - both electronically and in person. I’ve never had any negative interaction at all. When they can (& on their schedule) they provide super service.
I absolutely continue to recommend it to hobbyists & crafters. It’s a far less intimidating entry than the alternatives. Even against a used FSL, Universal or Trotec of the same price, for a hobbyist I’d still recommend the GF for what it does today and caution the buyer not to build castles in the sky on foundations of promised features yet to come.
10 Likes
AMEN…
3 Likes
I have allowed for typical startup failures; have allowed for company growing pains; understood that the advertised capability had inflated promises; have always read the official statements for what they actually say vs. what many assumed the statements said. It would not have surprised me to see the company fold early on and I might have lost everything. It doesn’t surprise me that some advertised features will never be realized. A couple of those I thought were impossible and turns out they probably were. It doesn’t surprise me that the company didn’t really have anything close to a prototype at startup so delays to a production machine (H/W only) were not a shock. What amazes me is the insistence that “we’re working on it” is good enough. Some folks seem to be OK with promises without an official plan. In two months my Pro is past it’s 18 month warranty. So go ahead and give me an idea when I’m allowed to start expecting a production machine. After my machine reaches end of life is not an acceptable answer.
Example: Promises are just words. Dozens of times the company has said that 1/4" is the current accuracy and that they were continually working to improve it. Because of that there have been many dozens of posts from forum members claiming a particular machine’s accuracy improved or got worse. I didn’t buy it. I measured and recorded the placement accuracy on my own machine at all corners, center, and edges 8 months ago. I performed the same test today and the placement accuracy is EXACTLY the same. I have pictures showing alignment points. Zero change over 8 months with the same 1/4" error in the corners. I have never complained about that. It’s not the lack of progress that offends me but the lack of candor. It’s not as much the lack of pass thru that offends me but the forum members coming to the rescue with zero real evidence or even a basic understanding that the needed S/W development is not technologically new. But it does take a team large enough, and it does take someone with specialized experience in a specific digital computer vision discipline. Do they have those people? If not they should have contracted the job two years ago.
9 Likes
I don’t have snapmarks, nor do I feel entitled to them. However my concern is more that the current reason given for having them is the calibration is easy/good/valid… So it goes to think if your machine has not gotten them their your calibration data is not as good and has the potential for alignment issues ect or be excluded from other new features/tests. Being recently out of warranty and watching the P&S threads about alignment issues worries me.
3 Likes
I think the term used was “noisy.” To me, and this is just me, it’s that we have seen machines with varying types of distortion. Wide-angle lenses typically present with barrel distortion. If the camera is perpendicular to the crumbtray surface, that’s fairly simple distortion to correct. If the camera isn’t perpendicilar to the crumbtray, or vice versa, you end up with distortion that varies with the way that either the bed or camera is tilted, which is much more complex.
It’s not truly “complex distortion”, as the definition sits for lens systems (complex is a mix of barrel and pincushion). It’s more along the lines of the angle of view is changed. If you have a really wide angle lens for a camera, you can watch this effect by taking a picture of something with straight edges, say a tall building, from straight on, and then taking another picture with the camera tilted upwards or downwards. It will drastically alter the distortion in the image.
3 Likes
I know that I’m one of the folks out of warranty already; with my last replacement right before my warranty expired. I still love my GF, but I’ve stopped recommending it to anyone for now.
I have a number of projects that I’ve been putting off because the lack of Snapmarks (or equivalent), along with the need to remove the bed for certain projects, just make it too tedious–especially since my latest machine has just under the .5" clearance, meaning that even simple projects, like engraving common size notebooks, requires removing the bed.
Since I had Snapmarks for a couple of weeks on my prior machine, I very much appreciate the added capability that they provide, and if they ever become available to me again–or to the larger community–I’ll be a happy camper.
I’m considering purchasing another machine, but despite my support for the company and the product, it’s unlikely to be another GF at this time. Granted, I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve had little time to work with any of my maker “toys.”
2 Likes
“Nowhere in there does it say it’s necessary for the beta feature to roll out to every single existing GF in order to perfect the Pro Passthrough software…”
i never suggested any such thing. i suggested it was less of a side project than you stated.
My preference is that they focus on pro machines since that is their eventual objective and I have a pro with no snapmarks.
1 Like
So your preference is for them to focus only on those that have a PRO and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves. That’s like telling a guy who bought a lower priced new car that if you a warranty you have pay more or buy a higher priced model… That’s awesome customer service wonder how long a business would last with an attitude like that…
2 Likes
If your devs aren’t reporting to the dev lead their progress, you have a broken process. Having been both roles, on a small team, yeah it takes time, but you have to do it or nobody can understand release schedules… I’ve been a developer since the 1980s and whether on mainframes, PCs or mobile, I’ve always had to report schedules and when my devs wouldn’t report status, I got rid of them, because that’s what being on a team means…
7 Likes
I have a Pro, I have Snapmarks. My preference is for the company to provide all the customers with certain core features. Don’t care if those help me or not. Deliver to the Basics first for all I care.
4 Likes
Working on programs for DoD i can understand the need to report that status of your progress in at least an email. But, to get rid of person causes even more issues with project. You either have to do the work yourself, another person has to pick up the slack or you get a new person. Now with the first two, that just adds additional work which requires additional time, which in the long run adds time and possibly money to the schedule as does the last which could require training or at least the time to bring them up to speed on the project. So if you were getting rid of your help just because they failed or forgot to report their status, that seems like a management problem and if my project manager did that, he would be right behind the other out the door. The best way to handle that is find out what the issue is first before you go off firing someone and possibly delaying the project cause you don’t want to deal with an issue that could be very simple to correct. But to each their own how they run their business, they know what works for them and the best way to make progress in their situation, just like Dan and his team, which seems to be working quite for them.
Just my dime…
Obviously not just for forgetting a status update, but more systemic refusal to keep me up to date. And since even as the chief, I still checked in more code than anyone else, I didn’t accept the “I’m to busy” excuse…
1 Like
40 years DoD, mostly as chief Engineer. I was the easiest going manager on the face of the planet. But everyone understood that we were a team and would work their asses off to meet performance and schedule. Agree with you. Not working with the team, find another project.
2 Likes
Reporting to another dev is quick and easy and doesn’t take all day, because they understand what you’re doing and don’t have to have every little thing simplified and explained in terms that allow them to have some grasp of what you’re talking about.
I had to give up developing, which was really what I loved and was good at, so I could spend my days shielding my team from management’s constant demands for detailed updates and give them a chance to actually accomplish the things we were doing that nobody had ever done before. They could tell me in 5 minutes what it would take the next 5 hours for me to explain and argue about with people who didn’t understand what we were doing enough to get why their ideas of how it should be done were completely impossible, not to mention constantly wanting us to cut corners to get it done faster.
I used to tell them all the time, “you don’t pay us enough to write bad code.” They never did understand what that meant.
Maybe that’s why I’m totally okay with waiting for a quality product and trusting the people who are the experts in how to make it happen to get it done in a way I will be happy with.
(It’s definitely a big part of why I am no longer in the tech industry!)
5 Likes
I’ve received the email telling me that the feature has been enabled, but the magnet does not appear on my tool panel. I’ve left the machine on for several hours in case there was an update. Is there any other trick I can try?
close your browser, clear the cache, and restart your browser. There is no firmware update for this that isn’t already there.
1 Like
Yeah I tried closing the browser, and using a different browser, still does not show up.