Glowforge finally threw in the towel on their air filter

[Nigel P. Jones]

Hah, what a surprise (not)! https://community.glowforge.com/t/air-filter-latest/28914

"We made a change to the design that we wanted to let you know about. We changed the Glowforge Air Filter shape from the original 'underneath' plan to one that more closely resembles the Compact Filter, and as a result, cannot support automatic on/off as we originally planned.

After many years of hard work on the original 'underneath' design for the Glowforge Air Filter, we’re still not able to achieve consistent performance that meets our high expectations for you. At the same time, we’ve continued to invest in improving the floor-standing design, and are beginning to mass produce it for you for delivery starting next month."

[John Lifer]

And this was from Sept 2018.....
"
OMG you guys, finally found my way in. March 2019!! Two years!! It will be TWO YEARS that my school is waiting for this.
AND that is only true if there is no more delays. Could be another school year completely without the air filter, making the GF unusable for months.
The worst thing is that it’s not for me personally, it damages my credibility with the grantors who backed me. And disappointing the students is the worst part. It’s my fault, you know. I was seduced by the commercial - I should have known better."

So 30 months of promise and they failed..... Again. Has been totally typical of the GF Promise, lie and spend your money....then post a fail.

[John Lifer]

Oh, And just looking at the last updates....
April was this. From Dan the man.....
More camera speed! Last but not least, we’ve just released improvements that make your Glowforge camera run even faster. Head homing, which happens when you power up your Glowforge, is now 12 seconds faster. Autofocus is now 1 second faster. Every time you close the lid, it’s 1.5 seconds faster to load the image. This has all been turned on for you already, automatically, in the cloud - you’ll see the improvements immediately, with no changes or reboot required. Enjoy!
As always, you can discuss this update in the discussion thread 287 (https://community.glowforge.com/t/discussion-of-april-2019-update/38577). And as always, thank you for being an amazing customer,
–dan

12 Seconds? Seriously? that is so great!

Now it only takes 7 Hours, 59 minutes and 48 seconds for that engraving.

[Kev Williams]

And working that slowpoke laser is probably still faster than working my 'state of the art' Windows 10/ HP laptop that does literally nothing but run EzCad to run one of my fibers. And I swear, a 3 x 6" ID plate I had drawn up with 7 words and a 12 digit serial number, when I clicked the OK button to SINGLE hatch fill it @ .08mm, it took FOURTEEN SECONDS-!!! - to display the hatch filled result. It takes 3 to 5 seconds just to zoom in or out! And it only took 9 seconds for the laser to engrave it! I'm surprised the data ever makes it to the machine!

And I traded $500 worth of owed invoices for it. The recycled value of the paper the invoices are printed on is worth more than this laptop. If there's a scrap heap somewhere to throw the worst high-tech garbage ever designed, I'm not sure which should be thrown onto it first, my laptop or any Glowforge... toss up? ;)

[Bill George]

We used to have some really serious discussions on here a couple years back and what happened to that guy who was always defending the Glowforge.... where is he now? They went on for pages about how GF was going to change the world!

[Nigel P. Jones]

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure there were some posters here who specifically called out that Glowforge's promised air filter dimensions were basically physically impossible to adequately filter the output of the laser. Looks like they were right.

[Frederick Skelly]

We used to have some really serious discussions on here a couple years back and what happened to that guy who was always defending the Glowforge.... where is he now? They went on for pages about how GF was going to change the world!

Wasnt that Matt McCoy, the guy who's avatar was a beard and mustache? He was pretty vocal about it.
I noticed he hasnt logged on here since October last year.

[Bill George]

So just about everything the "experienced users" here said vs the Glowforge fan club has come to be. The predictions have come to pass, so what's the future for Glowforge? Will there be a class action lawsuit in the next year or so…. stay tuned.

[Jerome Stanek]

If you follow the Glowforge forum you will see the same thing over and over again. Some of those people are complaining about their machine being down and have orders to get out. If they would have bought a little better laser they would be able to meet their demands. I see the of the members seems to calm their fears about buying a Glowforge and almost always say to make sure your material is flat. even being out just the thickness of a piece of paper is bad.

[Bert Kemp]

If you follow the Glowforge forum you will see the same thing over and over again. Some of those people are complaining about their machine being down and have orders to get out. If they would have bought a little better laser they would be able to meet their demands. I see the of the members seems to calm their fears about buying a Glowforge and almost always say to make sure your material is flat. even being out just the thickness of a piece of paper is bad.wow that much mess's it up huh. I've had warped BB bowed as much as am 8th inch and my laser still cuts threw

[Kev Williams]

As to people buying a Glowforge vs other lasers: The power of advertizing at work, their ads are all over Youtube... when was the last time you had to wait 5 seconds on a Ray Fine ad? ;)

A good analogy (IMO), the Yugo-- easily the Glowforge of the auto industry...
From a 'Yugo History' webpage:

...But the Yugo's true moment of fame -- or rather notoriety -- came in 1986, when an American businessman decided to introduce it to the giant North American market. Priced at a sensational $3,990, it cost half as much as the next cheapest vehicle, and aroused a storm of interest.

Orders poured in, with 7,500 bookings made even before the car arrived in the United States.

The advertising campaign was upbeat, suggesting every household should have its Yugo.

With such enthusiasm, disappointment was bound to follow. And follow it did. One influential motoring journal, test-driving the Yugo, called it "hardly a car at all". Owners complained of inadequacies major and minor.

Sounds kinda familiar...

[Scott Shepherd]

The thing that concerns me is he worked for Google. If you look at most any other laser menufacturer, you can find bad things about it online. Look up the GF and you won't see much of anything. Not because it's not happening, but if my suspicion is correct, he knows how to work the system to keep bad posts about it off the search engines. Whether that's a technique anyone can use or if it's something being helped by contacts at Google, I don't know, but I do know that I've never, in my life on the internet, seen stuff scrubbed as clean as that company is.

[Bill George]

Scott there are companies that get paid to do just that, tweek Google and remove or add reviews as needed.

[Ralph Undis]

The thing that concerns me is he worked for Google. If you look at most any other laser manufacturer, you can find bad things about it online. Look up the GF and you won't see much of anything. Not because it's not happening, but if my suspicion is correct, he knows how to work the system to keep bad posts about it off the search engines. Whether that's a technique anyone can use or if it's something being helped by contacts at Google, I don't know, but I do know that I've never, in my life on the internet, seen stuff scrubbed as clean as that company is.

Up until recently, if you did a Google search for one of the "big three" - Universal, Trotec, and Epilog - the return results would have an ad link for Glowforge on top. They must have discontinued that process, because now the return result is an ad for each respective big three. I follow the Glowforge forum pretty frequent, and now I cannot play more than one YouTube video without a Glowforge ad appearing. I guess that doesn't bother me too much, because I am not going to buy one, and they will give up eventually :)

You are correct about him being able to work the system. I think it will take a few more years for it to blow up in his face. He is shameless with the "I am sorry we disappointed you again" over and over... He is able to sell to people who aren't willing to take a chance on a Chinese laser, and to those who won't pay for one of the big three. He definitely is good at Marketing and over-hyping, but in reality, he is selling a substandard laser comprised of off the shelf components most likely from China. Supposedly the Glowforge was originally assembled at Flex in CA - see attachment. Not sure they continue to do so.

[Jerome Stanek]

Glowforge can keep a lot of problems off Google because on their forum you have to own a Glowforge to post and the problems don't go beyond that. Also they close the problem before there is a solution. To many can't connect problems for my taste

[Kev Williams]

The thing that concerns me is he worked for Google. If you look at most any other laser menufacturer, you can find bad things about it online. Look up the GF and you won't see much of anything. Not because it's not happening, but if my suspicion is correct, he knows how to work the system to keep bad posts about it off the search engines. Whether that's a technique anyone can use or if it's something being helped by contacts at Google, I don't know, but I do know that I've never, in my life on the internet, seen stuff scrubbed as clean as that company is.
--and we have this--
415981

Ralph mentions Glowforge coming up on top when googling 'the big 3'... For me, awhile back any laser google put Keyence Lasers at the top...

Note that whoever/whatever biz shows up on top of ANY search whatsoever, is based solely on your comptuer's IP address- YOUR ads are based on where your computer has been surfing most often or the searches it sends out.

Ralph was getting Glowforge because [he follows] the Glowforge forum pretty frequent... And the reason the Big 3 came up eventually was simply because he searched for them. I was getting Keyence ads because back then some yoho on the board was acting like a Keyence salesman, and I checked their website out a couple times. A few minutes ago I googled 'laser engravers' and Boss was on top, with AP laser, Trotec laser, and Epilog laser close behind. Let it be noted that I've typed the names of those four companies recently on this board, and google knows that. After the machine ads came the 'laser engraver' biz ads. Guess who was at the top of the list? Me! And why not, google knows my computer is where my ad edits come from, and making it come up first will make me believe that my ad is at the top of the rotation, the big cheese! I rule! But nope, I won't be first on anyone elses computer, save for a few that are in close proximity to mine. Targeted advertising...

To prove it to yourself, try this: Google something, like sewing machines, or toothpaste, doesn't matter. The go to a couple of the websites that come up. Then go to your favorite website that you know places ads on the sides of the screen. Bet a buck you'll find toothpaste and sewing machine ads... ;)

It's pretty spooky actually, and the reason many people are getting VPN's...

[Scott Shepherd]

Kev, I think it runs a little deeper than that. SMC is massive on it's traffic. I don't recall the numbers but it used to be over a million visits a month. That would push just about anything on SMC to the top of any google searches 9 out of 10 times. I am 100% posiitve their forum isn't getting a million hits a month, yet all the old posts on here about problems with GF never come to the top or even really rank. You can go through page after page of search results and find nothing from here.

There have been some things written outside of SMC about GF and they just never come up in search. That's really more of an active campaign to suppress the bad. But it proves what we said all along, release it and run it all at all costs. Ignore facts, data, and physics in order to get the cash and look like a hero to investors, which is what's been done, in my opinion.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure there were some posters here who specifically called out that Glowforge's promised air filter dimensions were basically physically impossible to adequately filter the output of the laser. Looks like they were right.

Basic flow dynamics Nige, it was simply not possible to achieve what they were trying to do in the space they had available. it was always going to clog as fast as running a Dyson vacuum cleaner on a sandblaster. After a while though we get tired of telling people who don't want to listen ;)