How does the car analogy not make sense? Should a company improve their product over time? Would we be happy with cars that used 20 year old technology being made today? No. We want better materials and things that hold up better. We used to have cars that quit after 50k miles. Now we have cars that go 500k with just oil changes. GF hasn’t improved on any of the things that it should have by now. The fact that they send whole machines when a part fails is moot when they should be redesigning their machines with parts that don’t fail after basic use. They are behind industry standard for anything that involves moving parts. Is it a bad machine? No. Does it need to be improved to include parts and processes that are more up to date? I think most reasonable people would argue yes. Thats all I’m asking for. Physically the machine is almost identical to the one release years ago. They need to figure outnways to either source better parts and materials or redesign so that stress isn’t put on parts thenway it is as their design currently dictates.
As for your comment about their financial model and them selling machines to make money. You must not be aware of all the outside money GF has gotten over the years. I think its close to 100 million from investors and deals with other companies who have purchased portions of the company. If they released a financial statement im betting you’d see that they have made more from that then from selling machines.
And the reason that they are inundated with emailes is because they don’t have enough support staff. Thats on GF. And fornyou to suggest that as a customer you should have to go to a group instead of to the company and that its a waste of company resources to engage with customers is pretty shitty. Hope you fix all your own stuff and never have to go anywhere for service. That would be a waste of company resources. Lol
Because I have too much time on my hands this morning, I will continue to read this post and respond this last time.
Glowforge personnel have solicited feed back from customers even before the machines were manufactured. This forum has been an open place for requesting features, asking for help and providing information. Many, many, many suggestions have “been in the hopper” for years. Many improvements have been made.
Glowforge has made the decision to not offer telephone support, even though it is something that has been requested since the very early days. I think it is rather pointless to keep telling them how misguided this decision is. We all want instant attention to our individual problem. To date, Glowforge support operates in their own way. This is a privately held company. They get to decide how best to invest their resources. Consumers can choose to keep buying their products or not.
Perhaps it would be nice if GF made comments on what they have improved on their machines in there announcement section of their own forum. I have looked at that section and didn’t see anything. I may simply not be looking in the correct area.
The Announcements section is filled with announcements, and each one talks about the latest improvements being implemented at the time it was posted. I’m not sure how you could look at that section and “not see anything.”
One of your complaints was that the staff is overwhelmed by requests and you are right, they are. I merely pointed out that a great deal of these requests should not be going to them and long threads of ranting just ties them up more. I couldn’t begin to count the times I have read someone asking for help in a certain design program, what settings they should use for a material, issues with the shipper… the list is long. But that is not what the support team is for. I have no problem with the questions being asked but many of us on the forum spend a lot of our free time here to assist in these questions to help free up the support team. Fortunately I have not had a major issue, every single problem I have had has been my own error or issues with my internet, but if and when I do have something come up I don’t want them tied up with simple things that can be addressed on this forum.
When my car receives significant OTA updates to features and functionality without my having to buy a new model, we can chat. Until then, I don’t think it’s a valid comparison. *My car does already receive some bug fixes to software issues like a radio/nav system that freezes and locks intermittently.
I understand the funding model just fine. But I also understand, as I assume you do, that investments are not a sustainable model, especially if you choose to stop selling your machine, as you have suggested.
You are now declaring your own argument moot. Your initial remark was that GF isn’t investing time and money improving their own machines. I have already countered that with some very clear examples, but you keep changing your definitions ad arguments. This suggests (if I’m being generous) that either you have never learned how to (or refuse to) concede a point or you are too angry to have a rational discussion. Either way, it’s a waste of time. It’s too bad because I did agree with you on several points.
Im not talking about YOUR car. Im talking about THE car. If you have a Honda accord that you bought in 1995 that still runs great good for you but we’re in 2020 so they should not sell 2020 Honda accords with the same parts that they made the 1995 version with. Does that clarify the point better? Again. Im not saying to upgrade machines that are already out in the field. Im asking why they haven’t innovated past things like plastic wheels on their carriage plates as an example.
Correct, investments aren’t the only way to make money and shouldn’t be relied upon to bankroll the company. And I don’t suggest they stop selling anything at all. Just stop pushing so hard for sales when they clearly can’t keep up with the sales they are getting and the machines they are sending are having higher and higher failure rates.
How does that prove my own point moot exactly? I originally said that they should invest more in improving their current machines. Would updated and more durable parts not be investing in improving their machines? Im honestly confused by that one.
Ok, to clarify, me, and everyone else has seen and heard of more and more people having more and more issues. Myself included. My later machines failed faster than earlier machines.
I am part of “everyone else” and I might not agree. Most folks do not post that everything is going well, so we don’t know the size of the population of Glowforge owners that is not experiencing more issues. You are inferring from your own experience, and that is not necessarily a sound way to evaluate the situation outside of your own world.
Agree. But this is sophistry because that’s not what GF is doing. At best, they’re selling a 1995 Honda Accord in 2000 - they have not been in business for the 25 years your example is implying.
How about this for a similar case. Between 1940 and 1985 no real fundamental changes were made to small airplanes (Cessna 152 types). They used magneto ignitions for cripes sake. No electronic dash displays. No alternators. No A/C. No fly-by-wire, just the same cables used for 50 or 60 years. That was state-of-the-art in civil aviation.
Only after the insurance issue was sorted out did innovation occur (small airplanes were deemed defective in lawsuits if they made changes - changes meant the previous version had issues so therefore were the problem when pilots flew them into the ground - 1/2 of the price of a small airplane in the 1980s was the cost of the insurance for the manufacturer to protect against liability suits).
So for 50 years we got the exact same thing, just for more money.
In the laser world, we’re dealing with a 2015 design (somewhat updated because they have introduced some changes for things like the lid cable, drive belt wheels, etc.) but mostly the same in 2020. The software is radically better and has shown continuous improvement over that time.
So let’s look at the industry. Guess what, except for the changes that GF introduced (camera placement especially), there’s been no change to the state of the art there either. A CO2 Trotec from 2015 is substantially the same as the Trotec from 2020. Same for Epilog. And those machines cost 4-5 or more times as much as the GF. What’s wrong with them, eh? Seems like it’s an industry issue and not a company-specific issue. Just like Apples are still using the same doofus trashcan for deleted items 40 years later, some things aren’t going to “progress” because there isn’t anything that will materially change in that space. With CO2 lasers we’re talking basic physics.
BTW, anyone who has needed 8 machines might want to look to themselves. No company is so stupid they would continue to ship defective products to someone. Sooner or later someone would step in and make sure they’d be sending a bespoke unit so thoroughly vetted that it would not fail. After all, they can send tens of thousands of units out that don’t fail. In a chain of causality the weak link may not be GF or the machine.
Again false. “Everyone else” includes many thousand people NOT having issues.
In my case alone my later, replacement, machine has outlasted the original by over a year and hasn’t had a single problem.
To use your example of the airplane. I dont know much about them but you say they have used the same parts for 50 years. Also that lasers in general have used the same parts for the last while also. So then why doesn’t GF use the parts from those machines that don’t fail as quickly? I have a friend who uses an epilog at work and hasn’t had a failure in over 5 years and the thing runs for 14 hours a day 6 days a week. Of course there is regular maintenance but not once has the machine decided to cut on one side of the bed and not the other. Im not asking them to invent NEW things. Im asking that they use parts that are known to be reliable and design a machine that holds up to regular use.
As to your comment about me going through 8 machines. I am happy to send you the email threads from the techs at GF telling me that they can’t figure out the issue. Ill also point out that you assume that every issue that resulted in a replacement machine was a mechanical failure and thus, somehow MY fault. I had no control over the unit that showed up not working out of the box that was otherwise pristine looking. I had no control over the other one that showed up filthy like it just got dug up out of the ground. I also had no control over the unit that showed up and didn’t connect to the internet for some unknown reason. Thats almost half of the units I’ve had that were in my possession for minutes before they became faulty. And I’m not alone. Many others have had similar issues.
I cannot imagine taking my 1926 Volvo in and getting a refurbished 1965 Volvo in return. At first look they are exactly the same except for little inventions and upgrades. I would dearly wish much more manufacturing was that way.
