I don’t know, I’m just speculating here; but I suspect that Glowforge isn’t going to implode. They may be bought or sold, but I think it is likely that a buyer would continue building them, at least for a bit.
The unofficial number of machines pre-sold is guessed at 10,000
There are going to be enough of them that some company is likely to create a solution even if the original supplier and Glowforge both go belly up.
I’m not discounting your concerns here. You certainly should confirm that everything aligns with your needs before you take a machine.
I am speculating that, for me, the risks are probably acceptable.
Hi @dan I’m really happy you took another look at this decision. I can’t say I’m happy about the way it was handled and I’m sure there’s some internal hand-wringing about this, but because you guys stuck your necks out, I’m sticking mine out and sticking with you. I’m glad the remainder of the update was positive and the things coming out of the pre-release peeps is very exciting!
I do have a few questions on this issue:
Was the issue which caused you guys to reluctantly retract support for this option in the first place primarily due to concerns over user safety or instrument (GF) safety? i.e. were you guys worried we’d hurt ourselves or our Glowforge’s doing this?
Will we have the option to purchase a spare tube at the point of shipment for our Glowforge? We international Glowfolk would certainly consider this option since shipping time of a replacement tube leaves businesses vulnerable in case of sudden death. A single package might also save on shipping overall perhaps?
I know this is being bashed out in another post but I’d also like to see some sort of metric suggesting how the tube is currently faring. I know this is possible using the x-ray tubes we use at work by checking tube voltages etc. and wonder if this kind of metric would give you some data. Will you guys be monitoring these things remotely with an eye to maybe adding that feature later if possible?
Will you guys consider working with partners outside the US to allow them to stock tubes so that international buyer can access them quickly if necessary?
Would there be any restrictions on users creating best practice documents for tube replacement procedure and sharing these? I assume there’s no liability for GF here?
I agree… even at the $4000 “full price” for the Basic, once it’s out and proven, orders are likely to ramp up. The only competition that’s even remotely close is the FSL Muse, and as that saga unfolds we’re seeing what happens when you rush a product to market.
Unfortunately at this point all we can tell you is that we’ll make the spare parts available. We should have more information before you have to decide whether or not to accept delivery of your Glowforge. I know that might mean you need to cancel now, and I apologize for letting you down.
I know it will frustrate some people, but we can keep this feature without adding delay if (and only if) we put off answering a host of questions that require lawyer, user experience, and engineering time until after shipments have started. I was literally calling engineers away from the line, operations team members off of supply calls, and so on in order to pull this together yesterday. We were lucky that we could manage it without causing rippling delays because we’re just spinning up the production line this week - a week later and it wouldn’t have been possible without risking much more serious consequences.
This is a good way to describe it.
Nothing. But that hasn’t changed from last week.
GOOD HEAVENS THAT’S UNCANNY
I don’t have a schedule for the availability of the tube as a spare part, but I don’t think it will be coincident with when shipments begin.
Our package is custom designed to hold a certain fixed set of contents safely, and unfortunately it’s not possible to put add-ons in the package.
Great feature for the hopper! We don’t have ways to directly measure tube life but may be able to develop software to estimate it.
That is definitely a longer term goal.
I don’t see why that would be, but I’m not the Friendly Neighborhood Lawyer.
I agree the risk is minimal, but look at what happened with Lily drone. They had something like 30 million in preorders, 15 million in private funding, and recently announced they’re closing up without delivering a single thing.
I’m in no way saying Glowforge is in the same boat, they have actual product in people’s hands, but Lily is a great example of how preorders and private funding do not guarantee long term success (or in Lily’s case, any success).
Are you saying you have made a last minute design change to production in order to accomadate end user tube replacement? Or do you mean you had to pull staff off production to work out if would be possible?
I’m reading that as he has to pull some brains together to ask if we were even going to be able to do it because it isn’t as simple as unplugging a couple wires and then plopping the new tube in. No design changes are being made. The reason we can’t keep pulling the brains away from their task is that the production line is about to gain momentum and for that to happen everything needs to be in order
That’s the cost to replace the tube (if you ship it back, shipping included). We haven’t gotten any info on filter replacements yet - either cost or whether the user replaceability of that is being second guessed.
