Heyyyyy. I promise I’m not here to rub it in for all the folks who got disappointing emails yesterday. Believe me, I know that feeling. But I thought it might help people who are waiting to know that the wait is totally worth it.
We were a day one Pro order, got the golden email on Sep12, and our GF arrived yesterday. UPS had managed to bust every seam of packing tape open, and thus the box was being delivered upside-down because the bottom box flaps were just flapping away. I’ll echo other’s suggestions that better packing tape should really be used. Only one of the handles managed to make the trip.
Despite that, our unit was in great condition. None of the scuffs, dings, or scratches reported by other deliveries. I’m super relieved about that… fully realizing cosmetic issues don’t affect operation still didn’t make me want to accept a dinged up unit, after the time and money invested in this. It’s nice to have a shiny unit out of the box.
Here it is unboxed on the table we made for it. I saw some genius here on the forum say they’d bought a tall shelf unit and only used the bottom half of it, placing all the shelves closer together to create something akin to flat file storage for materials. I thought this was an excellent idea. I knew we wanted whatever it sat on to have casters so we could easily pull it out for pass-through access, so I found this metal shelf unit with casters at Home Depot for $125, and we assembled it using just the bottom four poles. The top is an old coffee table top we’d kept after its legs fell apart… it was a nice sturdy slab of wood so we thought we could find a future use for it, and lo, we did. It’s NOT hoarding if you use the stuff you keep. Really. 
Setup was pretty easy (esp for me since the husband did all of it haha) and so we proceeded to the GF rite of passage: the founder’s ruler.
Now, our unit is intended to go in my darkroom, where we have a positive pressure ventilation system already in place. But due to some reconfiguring snags the room is not ready for it yet. We ran the ruler print straight up without any ventilation (lol as one does when one has waited over two years to play with a new toy) and it does the engrave first, during which there was a pleasant smell of light wood burning, as though someone was cutting on a table saw nearby. Then it switched to cut to actually make the outside shape, and comedy ensued as billows of smoke started pouring out of the exhaust hole. Fortunately we were running our whole-house attic fan at the time, so it cleared the air, but there were a couple of holy sh*t look at all that smoke moments, after which we decided we better at least stick the dryer tube out a window next time. (Obvious realization is obvious, I know.)
So that was Glowforge, Day One. Hoping to have some time over the weekend to play with it, but of course the timing of the universe has arranged it so we have some deadline-critical work projects that are trying to keep us at our desks working instead, boo. (Ok money is good!)
Anyway I’m looking forward to migrating out of the “where tf is my gf?” forum and into the “lookee what I made!” forum. But I thought y’all might like to know that all the sorrow and woe does magically dissolve when this thing shows up at your door. It makes up for it. Hang in there.
