It was my understanding that those getting a pre release unit were not held to back by an NDA. Has anyone done a review of a pre release unit yet?
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Yes there is ongoing information from @marmak3261. You can find his posts on the Weekly Highlights threads.
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Tested also did a review on a pre-release unit.
http://community.glowforge.com/t/tested-gets-a-glowforge-second-pre-release-unit-in-the-wild/3630/1
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I haven’t done a narrative of the whole experience and machine yet. Just the the various aspects and the materials. I’ll put that in the queue.
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I wonder why no other pre-release units have surfaced since those first two. I thought they were to be the first of many.
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Fifty of them are going to an in-house testing lab. (Can’t remember where Dan said that, but it was recent.)
We won’t get reports on those.
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Most are going to test facilities but I’d like to see more real people get them as well.
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In your opinion, do you think if we had access to the glowforge app --> would that help us get ready for the actual arrival of our machines or is access useless until we can hit the PRINT key ourselves?
Thanks, Brian
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It was in the q&a
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Ahhh! Thanks! 
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50 to one lab seems excessive. I can’t imagine why they would need so many.
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Eh! Who knows?
Testing the stability of the hinges by flexing them 1000 times per day?
Running them robotically for 8 hours at a time?
Lots of things can be mechanically tested in labs more efficiently than sending them to people, who have to sleep.
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Most standard testing is called “type testing”, where normally a sample size of 1 is used.
It is true that multiple standards need multiple facilities, but it does seem to be a bit excessive of a number.
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For 10,000+ units? Doesn’t actually seem high enough to me. But it’s better than 2 or 3, so i ain’t complaining.
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Who needs sleep if you have aGlowforge???
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We’re in training now. 
(We need a good zombie icon.)
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Testing is expensive, and you do ship tens of thousands of units with the results of 1 test. Depending on your industry, you need to re-test a production unit every X years (~3 in my industry for various reasons), and sometimes once a year. But its never in those quantities, given the time and cost involved.
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And yet in order to do things quickly, they might be testing a couple of units for lasing, a few for hinges, a few for something else, running a few for hours on end.
We just don’t know. But I am happy that they are testing them so thoroughly. It would be rather catastrophic to get the units and have all the hinges break off after a year, turning them into Class 4 lasers.
We’d all have to buy goggles. 
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There may also be other customers who have pre-release units who simply haven’t said so because they don’t want to be inundated with questions and requests. Or they might not be active on the forum at all.
(No. I don’t have a pre-release unit. I’d tell you if I did. 
)
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