Saw a Google Ad for this when searching for materials this morning. Sounds interesting. 40w laser with less area than GF but can accommodate thicker materials. They’re also promising in-built filtering too. Lionsforge
Not a killer for me but I’d have put off by the SD card transfer of designs. The online log in for Glowforge has issues but I LOVE it.
A bit smaller but built in filter and emergency stop button are super positives! the Start button does only one job and could easily stop or continue/repeat. I suppose Puff will have a “built in” filter if and when it arrives in September.
Yeh agreed - though I have no idea HOW they’re going to get a filter they can stand by as being ‘safe’ into a space that small. Especially when they don’t know what you’re cutting. ‘If you only cut Proofgrade we guarantee you won’t get cancer in 15 years…’ it’s a real toughie!
Looked through their site and can’t find any photos of the thing. This leads me to believe they might have one frankenprototype, probably a Chinese K40 built into a sheet metal case. I’d say I’m surprised that they’re buying ad space for a product that doesn’t exist, but then again look where I’m posting this… 
Oh it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re in the really early stages. If they’ve got a kickstarter coming up they have to have an actual prototype (I believe) but nothing more. Like you imply, Glowforge must have been either almost bare bones at the time of the campaign or the jump from 0 - 60 in producing them by the thousand was a lot more complex than anticipated (probably a combo of the two). I reckon anyone jumping on this new bandwagon as if it’s the panacea is in for a shock… and a long wait.
Kickstarter rules didn’t apply to the GF as it was crowdfunded (actually pre-purchased since they had VC money for the development) privately and not through Kickstarter. You can’t presume anything based on how it might have been based on Kickstarter requirements. Similar to how an Indigogo campaign has different requirements for product readiness and feasibility.
But your last comment is undoubtedly true. Almost every crowdfunded project I’ve participated in has found the scaling to production to be far more challenging than the initial schedules suggested. Today’s rapid prototyping tools make it deceptively easy to create version 1 of something - that ease doesn’t translate to the final version & production volumes.
Sorry - I didn’t mean to imply GF was a Kickstarter, I know it wasn’t. I’m presuming Glowforge must have been either bare bones at campaign or that going from 0-60 was a big shock because it took them nearly two years to deliver US units and because they still haven’t finished shipping campaign international units.
I agree on the shift to mass production too though. I’ve seen the same with other big projects and I’m torn as to which I’d prefer to be honest; on the one side I really didn’t want to wait 2.5 years for my forge with that money sat in someone else’s account (I’m luckier than many in that regard as we could afford to write it off to an extent), but on the other side, I got a Kudo 3D printer on kickstarter and the build quality is (IMO) awful! I’m over the moon with my forge and although I’m aware that I’ve been open in my criticism of @dan and the team on the handling of the campaign, the product they have delivered it AWESOME and I’d recommend it without hesitation.
I expect they were overly optimistic about how long everything would take. My team does the same thing - never ask an engineer when he thinks some software or hardware will be done because he’ll give you an estimate where everything works perfectly and there are no issues and everyone working on it is as good as he is. In real life none of that is true which is why a good project manager is important. They know reality almost always diverges from best case 
I suspect it was many things. You always underestimate the software effort no matter how much you overestimate. Hiring good people is very hard and takes a lot more time than you think. Spinning hardware can just take time. Their marketing impulses probably took over when providing that initial timeline. They sold way, way more than they expected. I recall dan saying he expected a couple million. Not only does this change your ramp challenges, but I would wager it changed their definition of what was acceptable. We all know they haven’t delivered everything they promised, but what you planned on delivering if you pre-sold $3 million is different than if you pre-sell $30 million.
Isn’t there a Murphy’s law that says work will expand to exceed the time allocated?
Whenever my boss asks if an estimate includes contingency I have to laugh because no matter what contingency you include it’s not right.
It’s Hofstadter’s law.
“How long will it take?” And " How much will it cost" have no honest answers before things start. I can say how much I will charge for a job but I have been way under and way over my best guess most of the time, even if I have not expressed it to others.