Is there a spread sheet or some other type of tracker for the issues people are seeing?
It would be nice to see a tracker of all the problems and what resolution was for each of them. Kind of like a errata document or common issues guide.
From the forum recently it seems to appear there are many quality issues (cracks in tubes, refurbished units, upload issues, connection issues, temperature issues, calibration issues, alignment issues, reservoir leaking, gears breaking off, etc).
The impression I am getting right now there are many open quality issues.
kind of curious what is the error rate, I would assume it is not 6 sigma.
Are the root causes just been shipping damage? Or is it manufacturing defects?
I think because they want to keep that thread for actual problem reports as opposed to an aggregate, like the âspreadsheetâ.
I agree that a compilation of issues and the fixes would be a good thing, perhaps you should start one.
I think that it would not be of much value.
There are 2 routes for reporting problems.
On the Forum in Problems & Support
As a Private e-mail to Support.
These are mutually exclusive and if anyone chooses to directly contact support then it does not appear on the Forums unless it is posted as a separate FYI thread.
There are likely to be many people with issues who are not posting about them openly.
I know if i had issues (for which i would need a Glowforge first!) i would privately contact Support. Personally i could not see much value in posting it publicly.
The orders spreadsheet can extrapolate information based on its limited date set⌠an âissuesâ spreadsheet is not going to be anywhere near as useful with incomplete data.
He was right to do so, for your sake. If Staff had seen this they might have said âin the hopperâ and closed the thread. If you want a yes/no/maybe answer put it in Problems & Support. If you want a discussion put it in Everything Else
If tracking the number of problems out there, it might also be worth asking for people to report healthy machines. If youâre just staring at a list of whatâs wrong and trying to make some sort of evaluation, youâre going to make a negative one.
Always good to avoid confirmation bias! However, my focus is less on the ratio of healthy:unhealthy machines and more of a focus on software capabilities and current hardware limitations that impact every GlowForge.
For example, I know that the camera is not currently perfectly aligned with the laser, resulting in differences between projected and actual cut lines. From Danâs update, we know that Glowforge is collecting the diagnostic information that will allow them to make appropriate parallax corrections via software update at some point in the future.
Iâve also see reports that Glowforge users are having to break up a single project into multiple cuts and engraves due to some limitations related to maximum size of a file that can be processed. I donât fully understand this limitation or the best way to mitigate this limitation. Before I agree to receive my Glowforge, Iâll want to take a closer look at this.
A third example is related to the printable area for Basic/Pro and the pass-through capabilities for Pro models. I understand that we donât yet have access to the full print area, especially when printing at higher speeds. The ability to print on longer materials via the pass-through slot on Pros also doesnât work - although it will at some point in the future.
After thinking about the implications of these constraints, I may decide to accept delivery of the Basic I have paid for, I may upgrade from Basic to Pro, or I may decide to cancel my order. This is something that I need to determine in the next couple of weeks based on the information I can gather from users today.
I think I understand. Many of the problems you describe are across all machines right now due to software being in beta. Thereâs another category of problems are individual or small numbers of machines. When I think of a spreadsheet of problems, I think things could easily get distorted without a healthy count.
The hardware is done. Fully baked. No more ingredients will be added. So your decision really rests only on the hardware limitations. If you delay shipment, youâll only be missing out on using it today. Meanwhile, the software will continue to evolve with or without you. As such, thereâs no benefit to delaying. Certainly a possible benefit if you decide to upgrade to a Pro. But, again, thatâs about the hardware.
I think you see what Iâm saying. Hope it helps you!
This is seems to be a misinterpretation of the current state of affairs. The pass-through is fully functional and people are successfully printing larger items using it by doing manual alignment and a bit more setup work in their designs.
What is not yet implemented is the automatic alignment and continuation of printing that is a promised feature.
Hard for a slot not to work. Itâs just a slot. The revolutionary thing is automagical alignment. Not only does it not do that it canât accept designs big enough.
The problem for me is accepting the hardware with a leap of faith that GF are capable of implementing the software features. Especially now that some have been removed from the advert.
If they know how to make the camera accurate why havenât they done it in more that two years? I donât see anything massively difficult or time consuming taking a picture of a grid and de-warping it so that all the intersections appear in the right place. Seems like weeks of work, not years. And why did they implement a version that only half works? Is it a fixed de-warp that doesnât take variation between machines into account?
I can think of a few reasons why someone would want to delay:
Giving them time to figure out how to reduce shipping damage so your machine is less likely to be damaged.
I understand that in their acceptance email they say: âEach production run we learn things and optimize: in some cases we switch to different suppliers for components; in some cases we use different techniques to build or assemble things. These changes are generally invisible to customers.â Delaying delivery may give you better hardware in the end.
For those not wanting the possibility of a âscratch and dentâ machine, delaying shipment will improve those odds.
If you canât run the machine without an air filter, delaying makes a lot of sense.
If you require NRTL certification because youâre going to use it in a school, delaying makes a lot of sense.
If not having pass-through or double-sided cutting working as originally advertised is a deal-breaker for you, then delaying makes a lot of sense.
OK. I used to give you the benefit of doubt. From the beginning it seemed as if you were intelligent and had relevant real world experience. Your posts were interesting, a little too heavy on how you can always do it better, but thatâs fine. Iâm used to people with egos. But over time your posts have, for me, lost credibility. Itâs not really worth sifting through the chaff to find the useful info. Too much is based on simple math verses real world applications.
I know you thrive on conflict and seem to enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing. Sorry to say that I wonât oblige on this one. Would be fruitless.
That probably reflects how GF has lost all credibility with me. I donât feel the same way about it I did two years ago. I feel much more negative about it now. Probably hard to see from the perspective of someone who has had a machine for about half that time.
I think this is the case. With the significant wide angles involved, there are likely minor build variations that, while within tolerances, get magnified at the edges. Taking the machine-specific calibration images into account is not a trivial task. Itâs also likely not a solution independent of other features like multipoint depth measurement.
There is also the potential for using the head camera to get finer resolution at a location of interest. Running some quick guesstimate calculations for the lid camera based on a typical 5mp camera and rough guesses of dimensions (since I donât yet have my GF) leads to roughly 38 pixels per inch resolution at the edge. Actually, make it half that because the sensors of a color camera use a 2x2 pixel grid for color sensing, so the advertised resolution is achieved by interpolation. So at roughly 20 pixels per inch it only takes 5 pixels error to be off by 1/4 inch.
Using the head camera to take a high res image of an area of interest for alignment will enable much finer measurement, with the alignment closely associated with the positioning of the laser. But that is not just a de-warp algorithm adjustment.
They are solving some hard problems hereâand the software team has been working on other, higher priority issues, like improving manufacturing efficiency so we get our lasers sooner.
I donât see why it canât be accurate to at least pixel level by engraving a grid of crosses on a flat sheet on the bed of known thickness and taking a photo. Then warp the image so all crosses appear on the correct screen pixels and interpolate all the pixels in between.
it should then be perfect at that height. To correct at different heights is then trigonometry because basically camera pixels map to an angle, not an XY position.
If somebody can explain why this wonât work or why it would take more than two years to code please do. It is things like this that seem easy to me that have me worried. As this is the most obvious advanced feature I donât understand why it hasnât had some priority over the last two years.
