There is still ZERO transparency. Why?

I feel like I’m in the same boat, I’m really curious what specifically happened to cause this delay after being so close. The one thought that keeps coming up in my head to calm me down is "Dan is super excited to release this thing to the world and make his backers happy. If he can’t say what it is, it’s probably because of some weird legal thing or waiting for patents to be approved or something."
I can come to this conclusion and feel relieved because I met him in person and have interacted with him over various media for a little over a year now. In all that time he has always remained, well himself. I’m sure he is dying to give us updates, but his very wise advisors and counsels know what the end result of certain disclosures will be. This is a highly advertised project, and competitors are like piranha in bloody water. If you want to see how easy it is to steal someone’s ideas and undercut them, you only have to look at Harbor Freight.

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Well, based on things @dan has mentioned it sounds like there isn’t one specific thing, just a lot of random little problems that add up to make current machines too unreliable to ship. Things as unpredictable as static electricity building up on a sticker. (That was one of the specific examples he mentioned.)

I doubt he wants to post a list of all the things they’ve seen go wrong; that would be bad marketing. They just need some time to find and solve all the little things that can only be discovered through actually using the machines. Obviously they should have had more beta testers earlier in the process, and they really should get a few dozen pre-release units out for testing, so they can find and fix all these issues faster.

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He also said the line of faulty machines he had are now in storage in the basement. That is odd as there should be engineers crawling all over them to find out the problems as that would be high priority if it is what is stalling production.

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cc: @tim1724
I dont think its anything specific. I think this is quite possibly the reasoning behind the delay:

I also think they are attempting to prevent WebMD syndrome by telling us all the little things that have failed on one or two glowforges and having us worry about that when we get ours, when it really isnt statistically going to be an issue.

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In my opinion, one feature that is not yet up to snuff is the ability to align the print job with the bed material that is captured with the lid camera. This is more than just a pass-through feature issue…

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Imagine that everyone attempted the same approach that you did and emailed GF directly. Did you really expect anything more than a canned response given that they probably have several hundred, if not thousands of emails in their in-boxes, all demanding the same thing?

Every person who is unhappy and has commented on the desire for “more transparency” has a different criteria to be placated. You want issues and resolutions - never mind the fact that in a complicated hardware platform that is married to an incredibly complex software interface there could be hundreds of issues that need resolving. Someone else wants photos and videos, very specifically cell-phone. Someone else wants independent audits. Someone else wants Dan to step down. So that’s four people who have all put down a similar stake (i.e. pre-ordered at least one Glowforge) all with different criteria to be happy.

Dan (or his lawyers) have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. They cannot please everyone. They have chosen where that line is based on information that we don’t have and aren’t entitled to. They absolutely shift that line and allow more information out as it becomes safe to do so. (i.e. proof of 3D engrave, pre-release user free to discuss anything and everything about his pre-release Glowforge)

Dan has said that they are considering all input from these forums, particularly when it applies to communications. He has said that if they decide to change their approach, they will just change the approach and move forward with it. He has acquiesced to posting photos. First he posted a stitched together shot of each GF at HQ, and when that wasn’t enough to placate he posted a shot of four units all in the same photo. Additionally, it has been only five days since the announcement. If they were planning on changing their approach to communications, it would likely take more than five days to get approval for it. Yes, Dan has to get approvals. Sure, he’s CEO, but he has to answer to lawyers, and he has to answer to investors. So be patient.

It will only get better in the coming months. More pre-release units will go out, more reports will come in, more photos, more videos. More pieces of the puzzle will be beyond the point at which opposition obtaining it will be a problem.

I’ve backed 25-30 crowdfunding campaigns including other tech ones (never at this high of a cost though). In my experience, GF has been far more communicative about everything than any other tech campaign I’ve ever seen. Thus far they are still under-par for delays too. As for the rest of the categories that I’ve been involved with; software is far, far worse than GF in communication; board games run the gamut from more to less communication than GF. But if I had to rank all the crowdfunding campaigns, I’d easily put GF in the top 90%. Granted, my sample size is small, but it is still relative.

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Oh yeah I definitely agree. Luckily that’s all software, so they can still send us our lasers while they’re getting those pieces to talk to each other.

If possible I’m planning on doing some hackery to their software to add some additional features they haven’t implemented. Ive got a little list I’m working on

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I originally thought that way. And I’ve been pretty upfront with Dan about opening up more. But I’ve been thinking about it a bit and decided he may actually be right in his reticence. I asked myself what I’d do with the info if he said “we had 10 machines where there was static build up on a sticker inside that we needed to move the sticker to the outside and we had 2 machines where the screw holding the flamminpocket to the flupperjuper dislodged after running for 47 hours straight and we had 1 machine that refuses to turn on if the humidity goes above 65% and a machine that won’t turn off without making brrrmmm…brrrrrmmmm…brrrrrmmm noises.”

(all hypothetical by the way)

What would I do with that info? I can’t do anything about it. I can’t solve the problems. I can’t even evaluate whether the problem is big or small. Maybe the sticker static is a non-issue or maybe it points to some aura leakage from the high voltage side of the power supply. I just wouldn’t have enough information from a simple listing of the problems and their fix status.

That really sucks because I’m an engineer and I want to fix things :slight_smile:

I also was wicked pissed that he had unicorn and rainbow announcements all the way up to the “not this year after all” announcement. Again, I sat in his shoes and said, okay it’s beginning of Nov & we’re toast, too many bad units. He’s got to tell us there’s a problem, what he’s doing about it and maybe making some kind of financial concession. That ain’t all going to get formulated and agreed upon with the Board/VCs in a week or even two (especially with a holiday in there). So it’s not unreasonable for them to have taken 3 weeks or more to figure out what to do and how to communicate it.

I actually thought back in the first announcement about Pre-Release units (was that in Oct?) that December was out. With the process being selecting, sending, receiving, using, providing feedback, evaluating feedback, making changes, implementing changes on the line, producing - it just wasn’t happening in the calendar time available. But I had doe-eyed hope I was wrong :heart_eyes_cat:

I’m actually somewhat in that same mind with the July date - with only a single admitted to certification (don’t remember which one but it wasn’t anything I recall ever seeing before), 50 machines going to testing (which based on the right side/left side comment about good vs defective machines, suggests more than 100 will be needed to produce 50 to go to testing) which will eat up more than a month of production at their current production pace. Then there’s getting the results of those tests & pre-release and beta into the evaluate/change/test/commit cycle before sending the final production ready units to the various certification agencies for testing. That certification can take 8 weeks to 4 months without glitches. And then start manufacturing for production release. Not sure that’s doable in the next 6 months either. It’s daunting.

But I’m hanging in there because of what @takitus said about the K40 (and it’s brethren out there - commodity chinese produced lasers in general), the results of the 3D engrave and the promise of that removable head… :slight_smile:

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Truly, I was also starting to look at the knock-off Chinese lasers and it was @takitus posts about the headaches, incessant tuning and poor variable engraving that solidified continuing to wait for the GF.

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I love mine (hate them too though) - a laser in the hand (or garage), even a Chinese one, is better than no laser at all if you’re any kind of tinkerer and not afraid to muck with things. But I still want my GF to do things I can’t do with mine and will be a love-love relationship :slight_smile:

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Definitely agree. I think that’s another blessing, if I actually knew what was wrong I’d most likely lose too much sleep trying to fix it. I’ve spent the last 10 years building things that have never been attempted before and hunting all the gremlins, problem gnomes, and ghosts in the machines…iteration after iteration. There has been more than one where, for one magical moment, it works and then never does again. Others work great, but have a mysterious and seemingly random bug that eventually you have to blame on solar flares or ghosts just so you can sleep at night.
In all my years of prototyping, I can count on one hand how many have gone off without a hitch.

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HAHAHAHA this reminds me of highschool when I used to build computers at my summer job. We had a bunch of strange ones:

  • one computer would pickup and play radio out of the PC speaker if turned NNW, and only NNW. It just so happened the guy who got it had it on his desk that way. We didnt believe it until we saw it for ourselves.
  • one computer would only turn on if you held it at about a 55deg angle.
  • one computer wouldnt post unless you took out the SCSI card, powered on the machine, and then plugged it in while the machine was on. It was a customers machine that he wanted me to repair. Incredibly strange.
  • one computer (a compaq) kept crashing even though it was brand new. turns out they forgot to take the sticker off of the thermal conductive pad between the coprocessor and the heatsink. Not such a weird affair, but it was around the beginning of the decline of compaq and we would always joke to check that any time a compaq came in.
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I’m all ears!

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I hate asking, but have seen OP used a couple time in the last few days. In 65K+ posts that’s the only one I can’t figure out. What does it stand for? thanks. Edit: Original Poster?

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I think they have done a crappy job of communicating things in a timely manner, but that’s just Dan falling into the age old CEO trap where you delay giving any news when the news is bad. Hopefully, he toughens up a bit and delivers news more often, but he may not.

But that’s a far cry from the insanity of these types of posts demanding copious detail to aspects of the business that simply don’t matter. If Dan posted 10,000 pages of engineer notes showing the issues and problems they have come across does that get you a glowforge faster? Are you suddenly not angry and disappointed that it was delayed? Or are you now spending your day reviewing engineer notes to try and poke more holes into those as well? Maybe Steve in engineering has been taking extra longer bathroom breaks, and you are going to crack the case?

And what’s the flipside to this logic? That glowforge is actually done and they just don’t want to release it? Or that it doesn’t exist at all and all the beta testers and maker faires are elaborate hoaxes?

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Yep. Sometimes, especially if in IRC it’s operator, but generally these days it’s original poster

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Yeah, original poster. Sorry!

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There was one point this summer a month or two after the first delay when we hadn’t heard anything from the dan in a while. Everyone was bitchin and moaning about it and he finally posted an update of progress which included a lot of the minutiae that they were dealing with. It gave us a lot of insight into the daily shenanigans at glowforge. It was one of my favorite posts that he’s made and very intriguing. I was hoping it was the beginning of a new trend, but I’m sure it was more time consuming than he would have liked. It’s probably akin to a cop having to fill out paperwork after a long day on the street.

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But let me ask you this then, was that post a crucial aspect to your decision to not cancel your glowforge? Or was it just kind of a cool glimpse into the world? And additionally, how many of those posts do you think it would take before you’re not interested in tiny detail anymore?

I get that as makers we are probably all curious, but these rage posts are not people asking for a bit of interesting detail.

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It wasnt crucial to me deciding to stay with my order, but it definitely relieved a lot of tension that was growing in the community and in me.

Whats keeping me around comes down to a couple of factors:

  • First off, I really dont want to plop down over 10k for an epilog, trotec, universal, etc that would potentially have LESS features than the glowforge. I bought in at the original date, and worked my butt off to get the full referral bonus, so Im getting a pro for essentially $2500. You just cant beat that price. Even if im incredibly unhappy with it (which I highly doubt) and decide to sell it, I will be more than doubling what I paid.

  • Secondly, I have a chinese laser already, and while its fun, it falls way short in a lot of areas. The features that glowforge is implementing will fix so many things that I hate about using that laser. Dan had one too and it drove him so mad he decided to save everyone else from that fate. Lasers are cool, but they shouldnt be a pain.

I cant say how many posts it would take for me to tire of hearing about production details, I dont know if it would be possible. If they made a reality show called “So Im Making a Laser”, Id probably watch every episode multiple times. I know Ive watched every youtube video I could find over and over, I went to makerfaire and bothered the people at the booth. I spend WAY TOO MUCH time on these forums lol.

I like to know how this stuff is made, but the awesome part about the forums is that the more info they give you, the more feedback you can provide, and maybe shape the experience to come or potentially help them avoid a pitfall. I know there’s the infamous ‘hopper’ where ideas probably go to die, but id like to think that at least one or two will get some consideration.


Either way, Ive paid off my glowforge already, and will be excitedly awaiting its arrival. Im also considering a large bed laser so that I can engrave oversized things. I might cannibalize my k40 to build one from scratch, or buy a large chinese one if the price is right.

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