Elecfreak's Freaks 3D on Indiegogo ...is it worth it?

[G_Poop]

Hi everybody! Complete newbie here. I would love to get into 3D printing and have a working understanding of how things work.
It still means a serious investment (at least to me). But I just found out about the Elecfreaks Freaks 3D printer... I thought for $299 + shipping seems really cool.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/f...printer#/story

It's not listed here and I would really love to hear what you guys think about it. To my inexperienced eyes it seems like a good bang for the buck.
Any ideas what I might be missing?
I've been reading around but it seems that no one is talking about it, so I'm worried that people with deeper understanding take it as not worth taking seriously and I am missing something. Quality issues, printing technology, size of prints....I guess what I'm trying to say, is there any caveat to this?

Thanks! I appreciate any help...

I have posted a similar question to the 3dprintingforum, just trying to get at least a few opinions from the 3d printing veterans out there.
Thanks again!

[curious aardvark]

well it looks okay.

For same price you could look at the model-t, probably ship before the electric thingy. Think it has a slightly bigger print volume as well.

Also when it says 'ships in august' - it doesn't say what year ;-)

As far as worlds first portable printer. There are at least a half dozen others that also claim to be the world's first portable 3d printer - even at least one that runs on batteries that probably has the best claim to the truly portable use anywhere crown. .

I'd argue my flashforge creator is portable. All it needs to run is mains electric. And I can carry it :-)

I'm biased and wouldn't buy anything ever again from a crowdfunding site.

[G_Poop]

well it looks okay.

For same price you could look at the model-t, probably ship before the electric thingy. Think it has a slightly bigger print volume as well.

Also when it says 'ships in august' - it doesn't say what year ;-)

As far as worlds first portable printer. There are at least a half dozen others that also claim to be the world's first portable 3d printer - even at least one that runs on batteries that probably has the best claim to the truly portable use anywhere crown. .

I'd argue my flashforge creator is portable. All it needs to run is mains electric. And I can carry it :-)

I'm biased and wouldn't buy anything ever again from a crowdfunding site.

Thank you very much. I have to check out model-t then as for ther rest, I totally agree with you. As crowd-funding goes, I was actually excited it was from elecfreaks as they have a working business for a few years and aren't a start-up. I use their LCD shields on my Arduino Megas with SSD1289 LCDs and Elecs are the only complany that provides a working, stable shield for this. So I was kinda happy to see a familiar company in the crazy 3d market space. I'm off to check out model-t. Thanks again for you swift reply!

[printbus]

The possible red flag I see is having such a low funding threshold ($20K USD) while allowing "perks" that total, if I added them up right, 4,860 printers at a total value of over $1.5M USD. What kind of production capacity do they have, especially with a promise that assembled units are tested for 10 hours prior to shipment? So many similarly structured campaigns seem to end in failure with sorrowful notes from the originators that say "...we only expected to have to manufacture a few printers"

FOLLOWUP COMMENT: So the printer comes from a company that previously mostly shipped boards. To me, there's a big difference between shipping boards and shipping assembled printers. Most boards these days are assembled with automated pick-and-place equipment, requiring minimal handiwork. Printers on the other hand require a lot of mechanical handiwork that is tough to automate. Can this company manage the job? IDK. Just saying that a number of other campaigns have failed to fulfill what turns out to be lofty commitments. And BTW, they state shipping will be by water, not air. So, they might ship in August, but anyone overseas won't see printers arrive for a long time because of that.

[curious aardvark]

well it is an existing chinese electronics manufacturer. So they have the business acumen and at least some manufacturing capability.

It's probably all good. But even the good companies still tedn to take 18-24 months to get anything to the point you can buy one and get it in afew weeks.

mod-t is 6x4x5 inches

elec-freak is 5x6x4
Now americans tend to put the numbers in the wrong order. Instead of x-y-z they use z-y-x so the mod-t is probably actually 4x5x6.
You'd have to check on that.
But I'd be inclined to go for the one with the largest z-axis.

And yep the elec-freak will run on batteries :-)

But you have to ask yourself - where are you likely to want 2 hours of 3d printing where you don't have access to a power outlet ?

You might also want to look at the wanhao i3 duplicator.
http://wanhaousa.com/products/duplicator-i3-steel-frame
$429 and much larger build volume than the other two.

[G_Poop]

well it is an existing chinese electronics manufacturer. So they have the business acumen and at least some manufacturing capability.

It's probably all good. But even the good companies still tedn to take 18-24 months to get anything to the point you can buy one and get it in afew weeks.

mod-t is 6x4x5 inches

elec-freak is 5x6x4
Now americans tend to put the numbers in the wrong order. Instead of x-y-z they use z-y-x so the mod-t is probably actually 4x5x6.
You'd have to check on that.
But I'd be inclined to go for the one with the largest z-axis.

And yep the elec-freak will run on batteries :-)

But you have to ask yourself - where are you likely to want 2 hours of 3d printing where you don't have access to a power outlet ?

You might also want to look at the wanhao i3 duplicator.
http://wanhaousa.com/products/duplicator-i3-steel-frame
$429 and much larger build volume than the other two.

THANKS again for all the great info. I would agree that Elecfreaks have the acumen and capital to make this happen. The have their own product line, quite extensive product range in their shop... I'd say they're going with the Indiegogo campaign just for marketing reasons...it seems that launching crap on KS or IG even thought you have an existing successful business in now quite popular. On top of that, why not have your customers pay for the first run....
But back to this one. I'm off to check out the wanhao.

As far as Mod-T goes, it seems that the Elecfreaks has larger print volume and better resolution. But I'll do more research on that...

[G_Poop]

Holy crap, Wanhao i3 looks AWESOME. I like love the choice of materials + the heated bed. I think this one is a winner so far! I am a bit confused about the "Filament: 1.75mm Dedicated" Does that mean proprietary?