Is Glowforge CE Certified?

Hey Folks, Hey @dan, are there any news so far concerning the CE certification?

Greetings from Germany!
Mathis

I’ve never certified a laser, but I have had electrical equipment certified before (and hopefully another one soon.) What we’ve always done is preliminary testing during development to make sure we don’t have any issues/have a solution for the ones we run into. The official certification comes at the end because 1) you need production equivalent hardware and 2) if you change anything you may need to re-certify.

All of the components that make up the system are available in Europe (electrical equipment, high-voltage power supply, WiFi and lasers), so if other people have done it they can do it. Also, all of those systems have similar certifications in the US. So if they miss something that is only discovered in certification testing, it will most likely go wrong for all of us. That just means a delay as they have $28 million to fix it.

Hey @dan, have you some news so far concerning the CE certification?

Thanks.

Nope!

Hey @dan, could you please outline your furthers step a little bit more? My stomach churns hearing just “Nope!”. I am quite sure that this is really important for all “glowforgers” in the EU. Being a backer of the original Pebble watch, I know what it feels like when your products is retained by the customs and finally send back, because of missing documents.

You often mentioned that it is most important for you that we have our glowforge on our desk by December and I believe you 100%, but please bear in mind, that shipping a product doesn’t just mean solving technical problems. Having the glowforge sitting on the the desk in a customs office near me, doesn’t help me at all. Being myself an entrepreneur I can understand your focus, I am myself more interested in solving software and hardware problems, but sometimes I have to do “the legal stuff”.

Please understand our concerns. If there is anything we can do, e.g. translating the manual I will do my best to support you.

Many thanks in advance.

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I hope I’m not speaking out of turn on this but a few things come to mind -

  1. CE marking is a self-proclaimed marking
    A. It has nothing that has to do with going through a certification/approval process from a 3rd party (I.e. Long waits for government approval, etc)
    B. By self-proclaiming conformity with European ESH/HSE standards, Glowforge takes the responsibility for its product conforming to those standards
    C. No reason to proclaim CE marking/meeting EU ESH standards until the final iteration is rolling off of assembly lines with all of the final production components, manuals, etc.

  2. When the final product is rolling off the manufacturing line and being boxed for shipping, if GF hasn’t proclaimed CE marking, and it’s your turn to ship, know that you can delay shipment when asked for your shipping address or obtain the full refund.

However, I can understand your questioning after the experience with the watch! How frustrating. :frowning:

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Hi. Thanks for your thoughts.

regarding 1.) Yes! This is also my understanding. CE marking is self-proclaimed. This makes it especially hard to understand, that some companies are not able to fulfill the requirements and their products are not reaching the customers.

CE marking is just one of the requirements. You also need a german manual when shipping to Germany, a french manual when shipping to France, etc

regarding 2.) Yes i know I can delay shipment or obtain the full refund, but of course I don’t want that. :wink:

I heard that it is kind of easier to ship to Netherland. The pepple watch was finally delivered via Netherland. Maybe one way is to ship all EU-Glowforge to Amsterdam, save lots of money on shipment, because we ship in bulk. We use this money to invite @dan and some of his team and have a glowforge launch party in December in Amsterdam. I mean really, why not? Amsterdam is really nice, and for most europeans easy to reach.

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Apologies - I get asked for a lot of updates on things, but we just share updates when things are ready to announce, and we don’t have anything ready to announce about CE markings yet. I appreciate your offer of help!

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Thanks for your quick reply. I don’t think i can fully imagine what load you have to carry on your shoulder, but your answers are always appreciated. I hope you and your team still enjoy the adventure. But keep this topic in mind, or delegate.

Maybe a bulk shipment would really simplify things. Can you provide any estimates how many glowforge are shipped to the EU?

Don’t feel pressured to answer right now. It is late in Seattle, take a nap.

Thank you

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Thanks for the kind reply! I don’t know why some companies drop the ball on it - obviously, stamping it, without really testing against the directives leaves them open to lots of liability if they try to fudge the system. Yet, it being a self-certification leaves some leeway in certifying the final shipped product vs what we have at the present moment. It’d be great to proclaim CE certification today, I imagine, but their is always a paper trail! And certifying the final shipping product would make the lawyers a lot happier. :slight_smile:

I think somewhere recently it was mentioned they have some consultants hired for various certifications; I’d be surprised if a lot of the parameters (for those certs) those consultants are evaluating aren’t applicable to various CE directives in some way.

Regarding 2 - I don’t want that either! :slight_smile: But, deferring shipment (if you do not receive the answer you’re looking for) is definitely better than stuck in customs!

Here’s to hoping we both see our Forges soon!

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Whether or not they can self-certify depends on the directives they have to meet. Even if they do self-certify, and I believe they probably do, they will most likely have to perform some testing at a certified testing facility and wait for the reports to be issued. They have plenty of time for this before a December shipment, and you don’t want to do your testing too soon or you wind up repeating it, but you’d think they would have done preliminary testing several times by now just to make sure there are no head-scratchers when you test for real.

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Of course you are right. If the only alternatives are deferring shipment or a glowforge for the customs office I would prefer to defer the shipment. Actually I think I would fly to Seattle, rent a boat and try to make it somehow back to hamburg :slight_smile: .

Thanks for your kind words, you inspiring me with confidence that we will receive the glowforge this year.

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(shoot…I’ll have to add the link. sorry)

This may help you get a better understanding of where all the orders have come from. Please, if you haven’t done so already, add yourself to the map.

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Click through from here, so you can see the "rules"

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Thanks for your insight. It sounds like you are familiar with certification processes.

I have the feeling that the glowforge could easily fulfill all requirements, because it seems to be a well designed and build machine. Considering this it would be so sad if something goes wrong, because of some legal issues.

Thank you! I know the map, I added myself quite some time ago. See if you can find me :slight_smile: I am “happy owner”. Being also a “data geek” some rough numbers from @dan would be nice, to see how they correlate with the map.

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Thank you, @jbv. The second time I tried doing what you suggested, and it did the same thing (added just a photo of the map) when I copied and pasted from the address bar. I probably missed some step in there. All is well, though…he’s already on the map.

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Deutschland…Hamburg! :slight_smile:

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That was fast! :slight_smile:

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I must admit, I had to look up your country code; DE. I tried guessing and didn’t even come close. :relaxed: