Severe anticipation and anxiety are not emotions that I am cursed with. If another company develops a similar capability, for less cost, with an earlier delivery date, then I will pull my money. Until then it’s all kind of academic.
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Yea it’s nice you can get a refund up until your unit ships. That’s why I have no problem waiting
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What would be nice to alleviate some of the confusion would be to know if the beta units actually shipped out or not.
That at least would be an indicator of where the team is with the product, without having to go into the details of how its going, how many problems found ,etc.
Glowforge team, did the betas ship yet?
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If I could throw in a helpful summary, (and I may be wrong)I think it all came down to the goal was to sell between 25-50 units to raise the $100,000 the goal was. They probably had the intention to get those first few out and get some feedback, without necessarily calling it a formal beta.
Then the unexpected kicked in. They didn’t just get pre orders for 25 to 50 units, they got pre-orders that totaled up around 8000-10000 units within 30 days, and more after that! They probably had to take a moment to splash some water around and pinch themselves, but came to a conclusion: there’s a lot riding on this. A lot of people put down for a quality object. Sure, if the team was interested in a quick easy buck, they could have used all that money to get fast cheap parts, assemble a pile of crap and get it out the door and run. Not everyone who ordered one knows everything about lasers enough to tell the difference between a cheap flimsy product and a good quality product. Some people don’t know the same in thier break pads either, and I don’t know about you, but i know i can stick my head up a cow’s rear to get a good look at a t-bone steak, but I’d rather take the butcher’s word for it.
Now, some may have put the money down expecting a guarantee that they would get one right away, or within a couple months. But what good is a guarantee? You put it under your pillow to sleep a little better at night. But how do you know that the guarantee fairy isn’t some crazy glue sniffer? Model airplanes he says…yeah right. Then there’s money missing off the dresser, and your daughter is knocked up, I’ve seen it a hundred times.
The point? The point is, is that they care about quality. They did the best they could with the limited parts they had to assemble some great test machines, so they could research and make a more durable, more precise, feature enriched object. Then while that’s all being done, they can take the reasonable amount of time necessary to get the good quality parts together for that good quality product.
Tl:dr? Hey if you want them to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed… they could, you have spare time. But now, for your sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about letting them finish thier quality product.
/end tommy boy references
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Just to give you a hint on what another unit of this size costs. I was looking into getting a table top unit made by Universal. Looks close to the Glowforge in size. Has a Z axis for larger pieces with the same size cutting area. The cost was $13,999. So I will patiently wait for the Glowforge to ship and continue traveling to GRMakers to use their laser.
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I had originally thought the same thing about the $100,000 goal. It wasn’t a goal as much as a number that was a minimum. Dan corrected my assumption.
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My two cents: no news (from @dan) is good news. It means they are very busy getting all the ducks lined up. It’s about to get very busy on this forum I’m sure. I also would rather have the exact device (or better) I decided to throw money at than be worried about how it has been construed. I can live with another 5 months. I think. This is such a revolutionary promise I just have to trust it.
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And to hear it direct. . .
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Its not about the wait -everyone signed up knowing they were going to have to wait, and that delays were probably going to happen. I don’t think anyone would disagree that they want to receive it when its ready. What I think the glowforge team could do is provide is a high level update (its been 1 month since betas were supposed to ship).
I am sure the team is working very hard. It won’t take till end of May to find out that you can’t ship in June. The betas were announced in December. Was the team able to keep that first initial promised milestone? That is all I want to know (and I am sure a lot others here)
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Ordered on the 7th October. I don’t know where that puts me in the queue and in all honesty I don’t care. I do care about getting a quality product though, so I’ll wait as long as it takes.
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When I ordered mine in September the page I ordered it from is this one: Order - Glowforge - the 3D Laser Printer.
It says:
Preorder Your Glowforge at 50% Off
Early bird pricing available for a limited time only. Shipping December 2015.
That means order now get it in December, not order and now some local customers will get a secret beta version in December, you will get yours in Q2.
Anyway Q2 is now fast approaching and we don’t even have confirmation any beta units have shipped.
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Ait also states that “you are ordering a product that has not been manufactured yet.” on that page, which before dropping two thousand dollars on a blind date prompted me to further investigate the time frame. The vast majority of us understood there would be an undetermined period of development involved stretching into spring at the earliest.
You are not alone in your confusion, several have expressed disenchantment at realizing there would be a wait beyond December.
On a crowd funded project, there is nothing secret about a beta program. That is standard procedure to develop a new product and is to be expected, especially one that integrates innovative complicated systems.
Dan has been very open bout development, and made himself available to answer questions, which help all of us who are left tapping our foot in anticipation.
Personally, I can hardly imagine the pressure the team is under to deliver an amazing machine still under development with such an avalanche of orders.
I still have faith in the Glowforge team, but if that were to waiver, @dan stands ready to refund my money at my request.
At this point I couldn’t possibly ask for more, and based on previous performance, I know when there is a threshold that has been achieved, Dan will jump in here with both feet to announce it.
Hang in there, you are one of the privileged in line to have an amazing tool at a price unavailable to anyone else.
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I thought it might be worthwhile to provide the forum with an analytical tool for determining actual shipment dates. Now I personally believe the Glowforge team will be reasonably good at hitting their intended target. Still, the game is a combination of skill, experience, and chance. Some of my projects have missed the dart board completely. Give it your best shot.
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When did anyone ever say Q1?? Everything I have seen said Q2 for pre-order, and Q3 for after pre-order, both first come, first served.
And personally, I’d rather wait an extra year if it means that’s how long it takes for them to perfect it. But I don’t have a business, so obviously that affects how I feel differently than those who are depending on this for income.
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You’ve got to love the WayBack Machine. 
As CFO, when I would promise the President some deliverable for “next week”, he interpreted that to mean 7:30 Monday morning. I on the other hand meant Friday afternoon by 5:00. That was in my pre-retirement days. 
I will be blown away if they are shipping production units by 2nd quarter end (2016).
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Actually, pretty sure Dan stated specifically by 6/30
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Now all we need is a fancy “jump to conclusions” mat to throw the dart from
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Found it!
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LOVE the dartboard I can think of many more uses for that in addition to predicting the Glowforge shipment dates. We can ALL play this…now where did we put all of those virtual darts…
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