Increasing efficiency. Decreasing price. At the time of this post $453,044 had been pledged of $50,000 goal. According to the Daily Mail the price of this #3DPrinter will be $249 (£150).
This is certainly an exciting development. Hopefully, it’s not hackers or a computer glitch. I calculate that at the current rate they’ll reach 1 million $$$ in 2-3 days. They could get up to 3 or 4 million by the deadline. Not to mention that my understanding is that the cut off of the crowdfunding is not an absolute; it can keep on going. Is that true? Anyone know the answer to that question?
Maybe we are seeing the next Bill Gates or Google in the making. I wish them good luck
@Transhumanity_Now , I don’t think they will get that much, but I might be wrong.
I think most of the initial funding has been people who have been waiting to purchase the printer since it was announced a couple of months ago, my wife and I were one of those. There will be a steady growth in funding from how until the end of the kickstarter.
The only thing that is annoying me about the whole thing is that those initial 250 & 500 unit($199 and $249 price points), won’t get the units until the other 2500, $299 price point units have been distributed!
This was their answer to that: “it’s expensive to ship early models so tiers were made to spend less, but get the printers a little later.”
@Transhumanity_Now
They can cap the amount raised by simply capping the quantities at each pledge level.
They’re going to have a HUGE problem with this kickstarter campaign. One of the biggest problems with kickstarter is the inability of the creators to scale. If their goal was $50k, then they were intending only to make less than 200 of them. At their current level ($500k) they’re gonna need to scale to 2000. If they hit your estimates, then that’s 12000 - 16000 machines. That’s a tall order. Supply chain management and overseas assembly is not trivial
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them, but I definitely wouldn’t want to be a backer at this point. Their estimated ship date is early 2015. I’d be surprised if they shipped anything before mid-2015 and be very surprised if they can fulfill all orders before 2016.
Vapourware with 2 beta trials to do and at least a 11 month wait…its more like a pyramid scheme where if they lose they get the money and if they do deliver the printer it maybe rubbish.
For an extra $100 now you can have a printrbot simple and proven tech.
They are at 797k right now on an undeveloped product after less then a week. I expect this to over promise and under deliver unless they have all sorts of infrastructure in ace already.
Granted, I’ve got my finger in the pie and am hopeful everything turns out OK. If you read the kickstarter (which is all you can go by atm), and they indicate that they have been working on the product for a while and are finalising parts being made etc.
And the only way I’d say it’s undeveloped is that it’s not in the mass market as yet… The few Beta’s they are selling I’m guessing are just making sure they have all their crap together for the bulk shipments…
Maybe undeveloped is a bit extreme. I hope it works out but it seems too good to be true. Add a year to the timeline and it starts to look much more reasonable.
It’s been printing for a while, it was first shown off and talk of the Kickstarter a couple of months ago… Apparently they are using servos instead of steppers as well which might be interesting…
@Daniel_Porter if they have a well developed printer I cannot see why their compliance of safety is so far off. No point in leaving that till the end …its the first thing you do after prototyping.
Its all planned wrong.
If you do a kickstarter and say 200 printers that’s what you do as thats your businesses plan.
Its doomed to failure as they will not be able to keep the timeline or produce all their orders in the same time scale.
If your machines is ready for beta you get it compliance testing…what happens if it fails back to the drawing board and more delays do close to their release date.
And any machine is never 100% as you’ll always find ways to improve it.
Damn! I would love this machine, but I just refreshed and the number of remaining $299 donations plummeted from 340 to 320. No way there will be any left by the time my check comes in later this week…
Uh… I don’t know about y’all, but my printer cost less than an iPhone. The next two printers I make should be cheaper than an iPhone… COMBINED. And for a complete, consumer-quality printer that’s cheap, Makibox was on the scene for quite a while…
3D printing hype is still alive and kicking. They just passed the $1M mark. Tiny build volume, DC motors (!), claim to print ABS without heated bed, mostly renders, I’m going to pass on this one.
