Originally Posted by Kev Williams
Whether this laser turns out to be an albatross or the best thing since sliced bread, I can only imagine the difficulty in trying to produce 10 or 15 THOUSAND of them when the original estimate was 500...


Quote Originally Posted by Rich Harman View Post
That's a good analogy for a typical Kickstarter campaign, but not for a venture capital funded company with many millions of dollars that is run by people with previous experience in development and production.
A major part of my business is engraving for companies such as Glowforge, many just getting started, many that have been in business as long as I have. And I'm always the last in the chain, and I'm always asked to "PLEASE RUSH THIS JOB!" And it's always the same reasons: We've been waiting on [enter one to several other vendors here] to come thru, and now this job is [enter appropriate: days, weeks, months, years] behind! I was told once that I was holding up a space shuttle mission...

Millions of dollars and lots of experience can buy lots of stuff, but it can't speed up the materials acquisition, engineering and manufacturing processes. The plastic supplier(s), the mold maker(s), the injection mold company(ies), laser tube mfr(s), aluminum extrusion supplier(s), camera supplier(s), stepper motor supplier(s), belt supplier(s), etc etc--- All of these suppliers and mfr's were likely issued RFQ's in quantities up to maybe 1000 pieces. Now every one of them is being asked to supply around 20x that amount. Any ONE of them having trouble meeting that demand is going to slow up the process. It's likely ALL of them are having trouble...