When the team of engineers put, 2 days ago, on Kickstarter the concept of Form 1, an inexpensive 3D printer which prints like professional-like machines. The idea was rising $100.000 in one month but, not surprisingly, in 2 days they have already risen almost $1M.
The concept is easy. Nowadays there are millions and millions people using 3D CAD software but in the world just a small fraction of 3D printers sold are professional ones. Actually the panorama of 3D printers is characterised by two standards. The first one, composed by professional machines created to accomplish specific tasks, the second one, “cheap” 3D printers, less specific and less precise that needs to more general tasks.
What FormsLab (the team behind Form 1 is trying to do is unifying the two levels creating a machine that, with a small price, uses the technology and the precision of the expensive, professional one and allows the program to be set in order to accomplish general tasks.
The key to reduce the price is justified by three important factors. Firstly the expiration of some patents, meaning that they paid not many licensing fees. The second factor is the type of laser that they used. This new laser allows in one side to reduce the costs, in the other one, it can model perfectly thanks to resin printing object of 13x13x17cm with layers of 0,02mm, meaning the same quality of a professional 3D printer.
In order to not have any shipping problem, FormsLab has already partenered with Dragoninnovation, the worldwide consultancy company that helped out with Sifteo and Pebble Watch projects.
At the moment the price is low. $2.299 for the first backers (obviously already sold out) but probably the retail price will be between 2.699 and $2.999.
I appreciate a lot the effort to reduce the price of this technology and I hope it is the first company to reduce it in oreder to lower the price to a few hundreds of dollars (my final objective is to get one in order to create puppets to animate thanks to stop-motion, yeah).
[UPDATE] Finally the project reached almost $3M and it’s one of the biggest kickstarter’s project in terms of backers and money collected.
CYBER Illusions 