Information on pre-release units

Thank. you. Dan! This was so exciting to read and comprehend! I just now ran out of ‘likes’…so I offer;
:+1: :heart_eyes: :smile::+1::+1: …and for now, just one of these…:squee:

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Speak for yourself—I’m pushing the “Check Mail” button every 30 seconds, like a rat in some lab experiment. :wink:

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Thanks,

I have been a slack lurker…

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That’s okay - I’m not getting one either. :wink:

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Like this clip, my montra will be “All hail Dan and Crew” if come Friday the shipping update has a Pro heading my way by December end (December 2017). :slight_smile:

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FWIW, I made a visual of the gantry dimensions because I’m sure some people will think the change of space is horrible… but it’s not.

Grey = gantry size
Purple = old estimated workspace
Green = new workspace

There is about a 1"-2" dead zone / “print margin” near the front.

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Nice diagram! :smiley:

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Thanks, that clearly shows what is happening. This makes much more sense to me now. :relaxed:

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No, that’s a temporary software limit until we build the ability to vary usable printing area with head speed. It’s overly conservative, and as I note in the “to do” section, we’ll improve it to 11.5 x 20.4. See this post for more details.

There’s no news here about Pro other than if you ordered a Pro and you’re chosen for a pre-release unit, you’ll get a temporary Basic.

Yes.

I apologize for the confusion in the post - I interchanged X and Y and rounded some numbers. I believe it’s correct, and should be the same as the website now.

@jdodds: DXF is definitely on the todo list.

We still have a schedule update coming by the end of the week.

Actually the pre-release units can do it too, we’re just only sending them to US customers.

We’ll have a schedule update at the end of the week.

I’ve asked our design team to make something pretty to show off. :slight_smile:

@dan_berry Thank you! That looks correct.

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Which did you find disappointing? The shipping work area gave me pause at first but the fact that they can adjust it via software to make up for all but a 1/2" was actually encouraging. It seems the only new news here was all positive and indicative of settled hardware and good software with a defined roadmap that is in line with or exceeding expectations. Software can be done non-intrusively (they don’t need my unit back to fix something). I’m far happier with this report than any of Dan’s previous ones :slight_smile:

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I’ve backed a few Kickstarter products which had to have FCC, CE and UL certifications. The shipped units say pre-release, demo, testing unit, or something similar until they can get all of their certifications. In most cases, parts of a product or early versions of the product have been sent to get early feedback, so there aren’t last-minute surprises.

I’m sure there are limits on how many a company can distribute this way though.

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Thank you.

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I thought about that but decided the glass is half-full today :smile: Some parades should not be rained on (I’m a little surprised that no one has said “but what about the schedule announcement, where’s that?” :wink:). Lots of goodness in this one. The next one will be what it is.

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This seems to be a day one feature. I hope this isn’t Glowforge’s way of pushing Proofgrade materials on us.

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Does this mean only those who signed up to be beta testers will be considered for pre-release units?

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That is correct.

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Bummer :frowning:

I had reasons at the time preventing me from beta testing, but I’m available now to participate in the pre-release testing.

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Doesn’t that just make this extended Beta Testing?

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In one way yes. But customer testing is usually broken up into Beta (we expect bad things & have allocated time/resources to fix them) and Pre-prod (we think it’s all good and are looking for validation). But they are both not-production :slight_smile:

We separate them in our company as well - it helps manage the client/testers’ expectations of the pain we expect them to have inflicted.

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