SMF,
Thanks for supporting RBT and getting a Milaana. I understand that you are a little jealous of recent improvements since the April/May 2016 Milaana were produced.
What I can tell you is that 95% of the time, I'm still using my unit from the same timeframe even though I have a newer (not newest) Walnut unit. In short, the reason I don't use the Walnut is in case I ever need to take a unit to Canada to show in Montreal or fly over to the EU with. It is still a bit too surreal for me to grasp that I now have the ability to put a Milaana together and head North or East with it if needed.
The intent of what you are saying is something I wish for myself in terms of a user servicable unit, or a manufacturer upgradeable device. The Milaana was designed to be minimalistic in nature using off the shelf materials and some engineering expertise in the top level performance. The unit wasn't designed to be user servicable beyond battery swapping and choosing mouthpiece or not, screen placement, etc.
Knowing what I know now compared to a few months back when I only briefly looked over units at various places in the assembly flow, I don't see the need to have semi-recessed glass, although I think it looks better than fully recessed or non-recessed female glass. When preparing a short stem for deployment, I've learned the trick to getting maximum extraction without scorching the materials, which means the turbulator doesn't really add much to the sessions. I just am not in the habit of putting a vape in my pocket to carry around, so I don't need the safety pick modification either as I remove the battery when transporting the device. Our medical cannabis laws here are strict but at least we can buy flowers and vape them without the need to pay someone to over proce$$ the plant (see Pennsylvania's medical cannabis law for an example).
More importantly, there is really not a reason to break apart a Milaana for anything other than repairing broken female glass or a rarely occurring heater failure/short. Whether the glass is broken or not, it will likely be broken during the removal and unbonding from the epoxy. On a warranty repair for glass replacement, sometimes the heater becomes a casualty of the fix due to the nature of the build/design. Heck, I would guess that even the wooden shell can have issues during a warranty/repair, as wood isn't indestructible and some of these woods hold up better than others. I'm sure I'll understand this better once I get a few RMAs under my belt.
You want to give people a choice here but IMO there isn't really much of one, and it is not necessary to make the choice if you have an already properly functioning Milaana. You think there is a choice here, but the time involved in ripping apart the old unit could just be put into building a new unit faster implementing all the fixes that have been added to the build over the last 11 months. Wood can't be made longer although it can be removed, and this is one of the design changes in current models. They are longer but a bit narrower.
The most important improvement is the Safety Pick for those wanting to pocket the Milaana and run the risk of a gravity check for an unprotected device. This can be implemented on any device without any type of rework other than adding the pick under the copper and adjusting washers and the brass screw.
Maybe once RBT gets the Zion Train rolling, 510, Desktop, etc. there would be a Mi2, and with some forward thinking, that unit would be more user serviceable in design. What we have now really isn't and that's the reality of choosing a US manufactured vaporizer designed to last compared to a US Designed/Chinese manufactured vaporizer designed to be landfilled when the newest iteration hits the streets.
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