I work for a medical company, and yes I know lasers are different, but… certifications take time. And they take a final product. So if a certification takes x number of months to complete, and they only recently (relatively speaking) got a final product, of course they aren’t going to be able to immediately ship them everywhere.
It sounds like they had to redesign a few small things about the machine to get it to pass some international certs, and they probably didn’t realize that until at least a month after the initial submission due to back and forth trying to get it to pass. It sucks, I know. It sucks from both ends.
P.S. I’m sorry for all the people telling you you’ll never be happy here, I don’t believe them. I think you’ll be really happy once everything pans out. But, like others have said before me, it may be prudent to look for interim options. To that end, I know many on this forum have had experience with other lasees that might fit your needs, and Glowforge has been really great about allowing open discussion of competitor options.
If you do them as negatives and engrave deeply enough you can just print them using the engraving you just made. And they’re out of copyright by a few centuries, so you’re okay there.
not a con. mine just arrived at the house. unfortunately for me i wont be able to open the box til next week. boo hoo. Nt sure I can blame Glowforge for this additional delay. Even though I stuck it out and waited, I did have some trepidation set in when I got my first “shipping” email and the followup delay email. I was not happy camper.
I for one feel your pain. I live in Canada and my delivery date has moved to May 11th. I ordered back in October of 2015. I also know a few Canadians have had there shipping address changed to a US one and have driven to the states to pick their Glowforge up. There is no issue crossing the border with it so I have no idea why the company seems to have difficulty with regulations regarding shipping. I order all kinds of stuff from the US and there is no problem having any of it shipped to me. So why does Glowforge have such issues?
Because in theory imports need safety and EMC approvals. It seems that you don’t need those to sell appliances in the US but you do in the EU and Canada.
with the NAFTA talks turning to be what they are, and Trudeau writing his own origin story about becoming Trump’s eternal nemesis, I’d recommend all fellow Canadians to get that GF picked up accross the border asap.
@garynobles didn’t mean to hijack your post, it sucks that your GF keeps getting delayed, and I’m sorry. I never felt however that GF has in any kind of way tried to deceive or con us buyers, and I believe that that estimated date, while created with good intentions, could feel like a carrot on a stick.
having said that, if you truly are building a legit business around a laser printer, not just daydreaming that you can recoup the cost and make some money on the side, like most of us are thinking (or telling our spouses), but actually a business to which you will devotd most of your time , than you are making a big mistake to hinge that business on the GF. after all it is only a startup business, with a software in its early stages. spend the extra 10’000-20’000 $ and get an established, proven machine. if you are not sure if they business will be viable than start it by outsourcing the cutting.
Shipping something like the glowforge across borders requires a lot of paperwork that glowforge has to fill out truthfully and potentially reviewed by people with knowledge of the regulations. Carrying a personal item across the border means having a border agent trained in collecting taxes and detecting illegal substances determining whether or not to let something into the country. Glowforge legally shipped something to a US address. What happens after that is more or less none of their concern.
Even if the glowforge is in compliance with all Canadian laws and regulations there is the issue of support. Glowforge may not yet be ready to handle international support. Considering the cost of international shipping, you may want to trek it south of the border if you ever wind up needing it services, but if you have it shipped to the US your choices are a little more limited.
And while this probably isn’t an issue, most of the proofgrade materials are forest products. Ignoring how the US and Canada like to have spats over dead trees, shipping agricultural and forest products across any border (even across US state lines) come with their own regulations. The proofgrade is treated wood, in that it’s not likely to be harboring unwanted stowaways, but there are probably extra reams of paper that need to be filed.
I could care less about the wood. I can buy wood in Canada. The machine is what I’m interested in. Our manufacturing standards are in line with the US when it comes to safety so I really don’t know what the issue is. What I do know is I ordered during the start up campaign fully expecting to get a machine to my house before they became available to the general public. Now I’ve been told this will not happen and I’ll be looking at possibly a shipment date (taking into account the 4 to 6 weeks from the time I get my notice) of August or even September. Almost 3 full years of waiting and every time I look at the delivery date it gets farther away. I would have bet money that Canada would have been easier to get the product to than Europe since we run everything on the same electrical grid but hey what do I know eh?
I’d be livid too. They made it sound like it was ready over two years ago, and clearly it was not. Part of my job is to make sure medical devices can be certified pretty much everywhere in the world. Canada is tougher than the EU on many things. Obviously their plan for global certifications could use improvement, and tougher isn’t an excuse it means you need to do more up front, but it also isn’t untrue.
The glowforge isn’t fully certified in the US yet, but certification for many parts is optional here.
I must have missed that. I funded the project (heh-- no, I preordered a unit) near the beginning of the crowdfunding campaign and, while the ship dates were grossly optimistic, I don’t remember ever seeing anything that implied that GF thought everything was peachy keen and ready to go.
In fact, as far as crowdfunded devices go, the GF adventure has been pretty typical. Even for a launch from a company with investors backing it (of which, many KickStarter projects are exactly that, btw).
Sure, they were late. Very late, even. But I don’t remember a promise being broken along the way.
I do think GF deserves some criticism for international shipping issues. International is hard and it feels a little like they took on the issues therein later in the cycle than they should have.
But that’s just an armchair guess. I have no idea how early GF engaged on international issues nor do I have a clue, though I do have suspicions, of exactly how hard it is to ship a device like the GF internationally and what the prerequisites might be for even getting that ball rolling (a lot of border control agencies won’t even give you the time of day until you have something pretty dammed close to totally finished, for example).
They must have taken down the “Shipping in December 2015” statement they had on the site by the time you ordered. Sounded pretty ready to go to me, and contributed to my decision to purchase.
I bought it for one specific type of creation (based on eight-bar mechanisms–dynamic artwork), thinking that I would finish development by the time I got it. The development has been slow, exacerbated by frequent visits to two new grandkids and monthly trips to NOLA to help out my Mom. Basically all I’ve managed to use it for so far is to run tests to make sure the machine works well (it does) and to cut a hole in a panel for setting up the venting. I really should have deferred shipment until the software was done, so I would have more time to finish my 8-bar development. Hopefully, I’ll be done before the warranty runs out! Thanks for asking, though.
BTW when anyone asks about the grandkids (9 mos and 4 mos), I can’t help but whip out the latest pics!
Dude! You need to get crackin’ on some projects for those adorable munchkins! (At least start working on some first Christmas ornaments now so they’ll be ready.)
boo hoo. Nt sure I can blame Glowforge for this additional delay. 
Even though I stuck it out and waited, I did have some trepidation set in when I got my first “shipping” email and the followup delay email. I was not happy camper.
