Thanksgiving update

If I’m right, the last info is that shipping will be at the end of December, so we’ll be receiving most probably in January.

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FLEX: Laser Manufacturer AND menstrual products. Ha!! let’s see if Epilog or Universal can beat this!

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Wow… I step away for ONE day and look what happens! :squeeee:

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i’m still kinda confused about the whole “per-release” thing … dose that mean units pre-ordered or dose it mean something else?

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It means something else. My understanding is they are units for beta customers made to the latest production spec but not with production components. They would normally be called pre-production units at the company I used to work for.

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@Dan. I find this announcement a bit confusing. Are “pre-release” units just another round of beta units going out over the next few weeks?
Then those users need time to test and give feedback - a few weeks more at least (?)
After which more hardware changes may be made - another couple of weeks at least (?)
Do you still think it is realistic to ship final units before the end of December?

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Normally, pre-release units are definitely not a different version of Beta units. Beta units are intended to determine both the basic functionality, reliability, and performance of the GF in real world situations. Beta units are part of the design and development process. The pre-release units are functionally complete and are to ensure that the manufacturing bugs, shipping process, etc have been finalized. In other words, does the unit work properly once everything arrives. Feedback will likely be minimal and public, but the duration is an unknown and could be a couple weeks (???) with success or much longer if there is a high failure rate. You will know the answer in less than a week with Dan’s next update. Not going to handicap the odds.

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This might help illustrate the difference between Pre-release units and Final release:

Glowforge: Hi, I’m building 25000 printers, and I need 75000 “Type A” motors made by Taiwan Motors.

Supplier: I can get you 75000 Type A motors, but not all at once. I have 5000 Type A made by Japanese Motors in stock that are identical specifications, and 500 Type A2 motors that are otherwise identical but come in blue. I can have the rest of the 69500 motors by next week.

Glowforge: Awesome, that’ll let me get started on making machines so people are happy.

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Great to hear. The amount of cardboard I’ve saved up is getting slightly out of hand it’ll be put to good use soon!

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And then (as an example of something that might conceivably change, though highly unlikely, between preproduction and production) “Hey, the blue color on those A2’s seems to result in 10 percent fewer orientation errors during initial assembly, can you get us those in volume?” (Unlikely, but not completely outside the range of possibility.)

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@dan Can’t wait to start creating with my GF. Keep up the great work and happy and safe holidays to you all!

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I know I’m late to this but Flextronics is a great company. I work for Flex’s competitor as a supply chain person in Canada so I’m quite familiar with them. It’s a Top Tier manufacturer building the Glowforges and they are building in North America. To anyone who is concerned shouldn’t be :slight_smile:

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Please tell us when we can get our GF~~!!
I order my GF during the crowd funding campaign (Oct 18, 2015 9:48 AM) in Taiwan.
I know that there are not many orders in here or maybe in asia.
But I still hope that you can tell us about what’s your plan to ship our GF precisely?
I’m asking one of your staff Terence about it because I guess he’s the only one who can tell me in Chinese.That’s very helpful for me~~~~THX!!

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The good news for the international customers is that it looks like the manufacturer, Flex, has a presence in several countries, including Asia,the EU, and the Americas, so the people actually manufacturing and shipping the units out will be able to get them around the world efficiently. They already have an established distribution system set up around the world.

That’s a pretty big deal.

I know that doesn’t help much…but it is a good thing for those who ordered from overseas.

They’re probably going to take longer to get to the international customers than those in the States, since they’re being manufactured here.

(And it generally takes from 4 to 6 weeks for products to get here from China.) :disappointed:

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When a company’s competition complements them, that says a lot about the choice @dan and company made to get us a top quality product (and future productions).

We won’t hold it against you that you work for the competition :wink:

So are you in the December wave or the March?

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Hahaha! If @Dan ever needs another CM let me know :wink: Flex is a good partner for this type of product and now knowing who is building it is actually a relief to me personally. There are CMs who are not good out there.

My order is in the December shipment :grin:

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Will we get a tracking number or email when our system is sent out?

You’ll get an email when it’s ready.

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我順便想藉這個議題了解到底有沒有人跟我一樣是來自台灣或是亞洲國家的人呢!!?

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我很抱歉。 我们只能在这里用英语写。 我道歉。

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