mharter wrote:The facebook laser group that I am a part of (amazing group if anyone is interested in learning more about lasers) is not a big fan of the GF at all. The project is led heavily by marketing professionals. I don't believe they have a single laser expert on the team...hence the delays. The majority of the folks that I know of that ordered one have refunded their orders and ordered a machine from our good friends in china.
Well, I hope they like them.
The CEO
is a marketing professional (with some fairly technical avocations), but they have a pretty diverse team, and the forum and beta team have got several laser users. We have now seen what they can do....one of the beta testers is posting his work now as he learns the ins and outs of the machine and designing for it, and it's got the remaining folks all excited again. (According to the CEO, when the announcement about the "delay" went out, about
half of 1% of the purchasers dropped their orders, so not too bad. Honestly, that was a
lot fewer than I expected to completely freak out and drop it when they announced.)
But......I never expected delivery of the machine by June of this year, either. For that many orders, it would have been ridiculous, and I knew they'd never make that target based on where they were in the beta testing back as far as February. A lot of the forum regulars were also aware of it.
I don't mind being a little patient for a quality product, and I don't want to pay $4000 when I can get away with paying $2000 for the same machine. I'm hoping for the best. The one I've seen in action is
really nice, and it's going to be easy enough for non-technical types to use. (And being painfully familiar with the design side of the equation, I think that part is going to be smoothed considerably......which is another reason for hanging in there.)
For the technically savvy.....yeah, go ahead and pay $600 for one from China. If you understand the work flow, can do your own designs and conversions, and don't have a problem with switching out components if something breaks/goes down, it's a
significant savings.
