Since it was posted in Support I can understand why @Rita closed it with a quick note:
But wow… Those of us who work in production facilities would say this was built on a Wednesday. Not that it is any excuse. It looks like multiple things were missed in final QC here and the carrier really beat it up.
I’m excited for my Pro, I can’t wait to get the email. But will it only be followed with this level of disappointment and get replaced right away due to shipping damage? In some cases individuals recive three units before getting one that works.
Is it an awesome machine? YES. Do I really really really want one? YES YES YES!!!
It seems that the bull is riled up already. Showing up to a bull fight with a red flag at least shows that you attempted to prepare for what is about to happen.
Obviously other people are getting undamaged units, so whether it’s a small percentage or whatever, I can accept that. I even accepted the fact that my FIRST unit showed up DOA. But the second one too? Even if it’s a fluke, better believe I’m going to be super stressed whether or not this third unit is going to be the charm.
It’s one thing when a person gets a damaged unit, but when a person receives two damaged units those odds are not looking good and makes you wonder how many more we don’t hear about.
I know we have a few forum members that have received damaged units. I know there are forum members who have received damaged units and have not posted about it publicly. Now we have two forum members who have received two damaged units.
@rekanize I saw the one red threaded stopper in the gantry but it looks like it wasn’t even threaded into the rail, but looking at the rail immediately to the right of the stopper, it looks like either metal shavings or even a crack/break in the rail itself?
Like I’ve said before, GF can keep beefing up their packaging and UPS will keep finding ways to test it. The heavier it gets, the more they’re gonna beat the crap out of it.
For what it’s worth, my unit did not arrive damaged, but the box looked like someone had its way with it and they didn’t bring it flowers first.
I’ve probably logged about 100-150hours on it it by now, and no running problems. A couple times I got scared of it not calibrating or starting up, but my concerns are very put to rest by the last noticeable firmware update when variable power engraving was kicked into high gear, the lid now dims when lifted and etc. No calibration or startup issues since!
I don’t think a stronger outer box would help here. It doesn’t look like the outer packaging failed. It looks like the transits screws weren’t fitted correctly or not strong enough. Or the shocks applied to the box are too great for the contents. Apart from one where the mains lead fell out this seems to be the general problem.
Assuming the new box is the one on the top of the stack, and assuming it left Glowforge (or Flex, or whatever) in good condition, it looks like it took a beating at the hands of the carrier.
The state of the unit could also have been a comedy of errors (a dark comedy for rekanize) and something destined for the rework pile wound up in the ship it pile. As I am waiting for my it has left the building email, it does make me nervous.
That’s what it looked like. It’s old gen1 packaging and the internal shipping locking mechanisms were not in place. OTOH, old packaging or not, that lack of QC on making sure the gantry is locked and all the rubber strips and things in place is a huge fail. Wonder when it came off the line.
Not big on speculating but there is a decent chance that the second unit may have come from Seattle, not the factory. Also appeared to have the same older style packaging as my Pre-Release. There were no internal foam blocks holding the gantry. And yes, the gantry slipped on my Pre-Release unit during shipping but not as severe. If I remember correctly from the original post it arrived via FedEx which was how the Pre-Release units were shipped from Seattle.
This may not be an indication as to the quality of the current factory shipments.
yeah, i had a similar conjecture. if nothing else, it shows the stock they have in the seattle office should probably be manually repacked, at least with the internal supports. surely hiring a temp to do that would be cheaper than shipping more than a couple back and forth (of course they may not have more than a handful as a support buffer at the moment, so who knows).
My gantry slipped also. It is the old style packaging, without the foam block inside the machine. One of the retaining shipping screws had fallen out and the gantry had come off track on one side. After checking for leaks, I pushed the gantry back into position. Gf support gave me the go ahead to start it up, and everything works great! Yes, I would have preferred that it didn’t show up out of whack. I think a little washer on the ends of the screws would help them stay put during shipping.
