Looking over the crowdsourced spreadsheet of order date/golden email/shipping emails, it seems there’s a two-week lead before shipping. If the June update is to be believed, Pro shipments will begin by the end of the month. This means the Pro golden emails should start going out very soon. Any wagers on when we’ll see the first of these emails? My index finger is getting very itchy just waiting to push that big glowing button! 
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I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that glowforge was saying they were shipping at BAMF - referring to the emails saying they would ship within 6 weeks, and that units started showing up in around 2-3 weeks. I expect their ‘shipping’ dates to mean when the emails go out to confirm shipping information.
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What we have been seeing are emails arriving which state “Your GlowForge is ready, do you still want it?” which arrive approximately 2 weeks before receiving a shipping confirmation email (with actual delivery sometime soon thereafter). To be clear: I do not expect that this is a timeline that is promised in any way. I am just extrapolating out from past (Basic) data and applying it to Pro shipments. For all I know there could be a completely different procedure. But IF that schedule continues, and IF Pro shipments are still on track to begin by the end of the month, then I would expect to see Pro golden emails showing up today or tomorrow (6/19-20). Would I be surprised if we don’t see that happen? Not at all. None of this is guaranteed. Dan only gave us expected timelines not guaranteed deliveries.
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i’m thinking the pros will “ship” just like the others did - so emails will go out toward the end of the month. now, they might be able to speed that up and send them out earlier, but i think that’s their original goal.
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This question has come up a lot in reference to @dan saying,
Has @dan cleared this confusion up anywhere?
Are we looking at the first(do you want your Glowforge now) emails or the shipping notification email at the end of the month?
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Well at BAMF Dan announced they were shipping at the point the contact emails go out. That isn’t shipping in my book. That is when they leave the factor which seems about two weeks later.
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Many words have different definitions depending on who is using them, and in what context they are being used.
I’m not trying to “excuse” anyone here, just wanting to point out that there is a possibility that the definition of shipping that was meant by GlowForge at BAMF could still be technically correct, even if we wouldn’t use the same definition that was being applied there.
I don’t know what FLEX would consider shipped (could it be that the order to make the GF had “shipped” and that started the creation of that particular machine? Could it be that the item is considered “shipped” once it leaves the production line and sent to Q&A? Or could it be considered “shipped” using a different set of requirements.)
The point is, we don’t have their definition, so we can’t judge until that definition has been provided.
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For those folks in the business of manufacturing: when custody of a unit gets handed over from the manufacturing department to the shipping department, how does that work? From an inventory and management point of view the Glowforge steps from the manufacturing stage to the shipping stage. So I could see saying, “shipping begins”.
It is an alternate way of describing it from the company’s point of view. From the customer’s point of view, shipping means tracking number issued and handed over to delivery company.
Although @jacobturner might not accept delivery, and I believe he has ordered a Pro, he gets my vote.
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It goes from Work in Progress (WIP) to finished stock in accounting terms and is transferred from production to the goods out dept aka Dispatch. Shipping begins when it is dispatched to the courier, i.e. leaves the factory. You might get a shipping notice from the courier a day or two before it is actually picked up. I.e. they have been notified it is ready to pick up.
Not sure why there is more than a working day from returning the email. Perhaps they send the email two weeks before your machine is ready so they are not holding up dispatch waiting for you to reply.
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I suspect they’re batching deliveries and collecting responses to the golden email over the course those couple of weeks, at least for the first several batches. I think they can be excused for saying they’re shipping production units when they started collecting the responses to confirm the first recipients were ready for them. Giving them some time to reply seems reasonable.
I always have to remember that those of us on the forum are only the most die hard customers. There are many more who I am sure weren’t feverishly watching their inboxes like I was. 
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The last thing a factory wants is finished stock hanging around so, you want the address available in advance of the machine being ready so that as soon as it is it can be collected. I think they need fifty to sixty a day from this point on but I don’t think they are out of single digits yet.
I would guess that would only be a problem towards the end of the run, when there would be concern of an overrun. At the moment they know then need to ship thousands, and so it is trivial to put a shipping sticker on every one coming off the line the moment folks respond. There would be no need to batch, since A) UPS doesn’t care (they will come pick up 1-100000 items when called) whether these are batched (as long as they know they are picking up a certain size for a certain truck(s)) and B) there are way more people waiting than current production, so if someone delays, just pick the next off the list. No reason to run a 2 week lag that I can see for inventory reduction.
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Right, and if they’re still producing very low volume it’s much more efficient to perform QA, packing, and shipping in batches since you don’t have the volume to keep dedicated people focused on those tasks every shift.
In any case, we’re all just idly speculating about how their production operations may or may not work and not adding any value since we don’t know any of the important details. I’ll see myself out.
I think storage space is at a premium in most factories and having finished stock on the books makes the accountants unhappy.
I agree. So what I am saying is unless UPS for some reason can’t pick up more than N units per day, and there are thousands to ship, at the end of the day there should be zero to be stored (since currently the list of shippable addresses is so deep there is never a reason to store). And if you are overloading UPS’s ability to pick up (we wish) then UPS will make multiple pickups I am sure.
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The list of shippable addresses is only as long as the number of people who have replied to the email. So you have to send out plenty in advance in case a few people don’t reply in time. So if they do all reply you can’t ship them all straight away. At lease some people will have to wait for their machine to be made.
Not sure why it is two weeks though. Seems like it should only be a day or two. I.e. keep emailing people until you have enough takers to pick up today’s dispatch. Roll over all those that didn’t reply in time to the next day. Do the same the next day. It doesn’t matter how many don’t reply there will always be enough that do.
yep. Seems logical. I’d also buy a day or 2 max delay. And that would assume a higher rate of deferrals/ not seeing emails… We certainly know there are a lot of active users scanning their email accounts intensely! 
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No doubt after two years a few emails will bounce and a few people will have died. Actually looking at the US death rate it could be about 80 in 10000.
I swear, you always know how to brighten someones day lol.
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I think, fwiw, that the time from email to physical ship is now closer to a week. I got my email on a friday iirc (late afternoon, so my response would have sat over the weekend) and UPS says the origin scan was the next-plus-one tuesday (so 7 business days).
So many people deserve a pro.
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