I don’t see much point in continuing this. Some are convinced betas are out and some are not. Nothing short of a statement from GF themselves will settle it and I don’t see that happening.
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Is it possible that it represents an evolution of thought or maturity of the process? When you are sitting around in the early going having a beer, kicking around ideas and laying out a strategy, you think putting a “not ready for prime time” iteration in the wild (e.g. public makerspace) is a way to got a lot of exposure, feedback, etc. But after you have raised $37,000,000 in funding and pre-orders, maybe you begin to realize that this venture has elevated itself to a whole new plane with significantly different expectation paths in the market. You sit back and go “Woah, I know we said betas to the makerspace space, but man, in hindsight that just seems like a bad plan given this given the [big time] environment we find ourselves in here. We were too good at marketing and that’s raised the bar so high that any public access to the product we had envisioned that would serve multiple masters just seems like such a bad plan now. We can’t put it out until it is truely ready for prime time.” But the comment is out in the public domain, you can’t pull it back, so you have to live with it. Revised beta. . . rotate the beta units through the hands of those that serve the only important master at this point, getting it right.
Anyway, if this old school guy had to guess where we are at currently, that would be it.
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A wise thought
I’ve always assumed the “before August” quote from a while back. Gives me plenty of time to become a laser expert before it arrives. Thanks @dan for the update. Keep juggling.
You’re just jealous that you hold no expertise in tomatoes. Haha!
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I do not, but with the large delay in glowforge shipping I will have plantains to learn about them, along with all of their laser variants
@dan, I would really like to see a breakdown of sales, both during the crowd funded period and up to present, and a breakdown between basic and pro units would be nice. That way we can kind of figure out where we are in the pecking order. Thanks.
Unfortunately that’s not something we’ve got planned - the time to do the analysis comes at the expense of other stuff, like shipping. (Plus there are a lot of people eyeing our success who would enjoy knowing more about how things have been going since the campaign, and we’d rather keep that to ourselves for now).
As far as beta units - we don’t have units in public or in the hands of people who can talk about them right now. When we get them there, I will let everyone know!
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Thanks @dan for clarifying the beta discussion 
Keeping the hungry masses updated will help squash any riots the peons might be thinking about!
The following percentage split was posted after the first week or so. You can be sure that the Pro/Basic split changed since that time. (By Oct 22 the Pro was up to 55%) But for the 30 day pre-order it would be close to $3000 per order. If you know what the ticker was at the time of order then you can figure out (+/- a bunch) where your order falls. For example the ticker was about $780,000 when I finished my second beer at the brewery, so my order should near #260.
Using that logic and my flawed memory (which tells me the total was over $300,000 but under $400,000) I’m between #'s 100 and 133. 
Edit: (For the record I posted my reply thinking I was in another thread. I’ll leave the post seeing it’s somewhat relevant)
Could folks who have better memory or records recreate the trajectory of the sales total in the first 30 days which would help to fine tune the guesses. Just meaningless activity to take up the time until further information is trickled out.
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That is the best thing I have read on here in a long time…
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A quick skim of posts and pics. Not linear and the numbers are real close but still approximate.
$1,000,000+ Sept 24
$5,350,000 Oct 2
$6,000,000 Oct 4
$7,000,000 Oct 7
$8,000,000 Oct 9
$9,500,000 Oct 13
$10,000,000 Oct 14
$18,700,000 Oct 21
$21,500,000 Oct 22
$27,907,995 Oct 24
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Oh, this is so complicated. The simplest answer is it all depends on how big a factory you have.
Contract manufacturers, here and overseas, certainly have the capacity. It’s perfectly feasible for a contract house to build 10,000 glowforges, then build 50,000 RC cars, and then build another 10,000 glowforges. It’s more in the execution of transferring the glowforge out of development and into production. Ideally you write your manufacturing process, build about 5 and refine. Then you take your refined process to the contract manufacturer and they build fifty or a hundred and you see if it needs to be refined again. Then you ramp up production. A factor at play here is how easy is it to screw up the process? It is one thing to have the contract manufacturer’s best employees build a hundred units and another for the floor to build a hundred a day with a high level of quality. A well engineered product is also engineered for manufacturability; a good contract manufacturer has done this for years so they know what to look for and what to do and not do. It’s what they do. If everything goes swimmingly it is doable. Even some bumps and it is doable.
Beyond the issue of daily volume is do they have 10,000 complete sets of parts? The old for want of a nail the kingdom was lost applies to manufacturing. I think it was GM a few years ago that had to shut down a couple of factories because of a shortage of windshield wipers. I think they’ll assemble, at least at first, in North America, but if they do assemble in Asia, as rpegg suggests, factor in approximately 5 weeks for the containers to get from there to a West Coast port.
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Thank you. Indeed educational. I am confident that the founders totally understand all this.
I’m not much when it come to comments. I purchased the Glowforge based on what you said it will do. Please make sure you deliver when you have it perfected to do what you said it will do. I’m also a hobbyist and can’t wait to get the Glowforge and not a so so machine.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Rod
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Your killin me …rofl… 
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