MOD-t Vs. MOTA?

[clarityyy]

What scares me a bit is that MOTA just recently cancelled their Kickstarter program because they were unable to be able to make a 3D printer for under $400. This worries me because the MOD-t is $249. How the heck are you guys able to do it??

[NewMatter]

There are two elements to making a 3D printer affordable - economics and design.

Economically, you have to be prepared to build thousands of printers, not hundreds, and so the bar is set pretty high for these crowd-funded campaigns. With the way crown-funding seems to go, the vast majority of any funding raised is raised in the first couple of days. I suspect Moto feared that the initial rate of backing was too slow, and there is a huge marketing risk to having a failed crowd-funding campaign -- better to cancel than to risk not getting funded. (I believe there was also some unhappiness over their proprietary filament cartridges.) In contrast, New Matter has had an overwhelming crowd-funding response, enabling us to move forward with confidence.

Regarding design, one of the Moto 3D printer videos talks about having more than 300 separate components. Rather than hundreds of components, the MOD-t has dozens of components. (The exploded view of the MOD-t printer in the Indiegogo video at about 1:38 is worth studying.) With fewer parts, it's not just that the part cost is lower, tooling costs are lower, assembly costs are lower, and inventory and logistics are greatly simplified.

[vinnie]

Regarding design, one of the Moto 3D printer videos talks about having more than 300 separate components. Rather than hundreds of components, the MOD-t has dozens of components. (The exploded view of the MOD-t printer in the Indiegogo video at about 1:38 is worth studying.) With fewer parts, it's not just that the part cost is lower, tooling costs are lower, assembly costs are lower, and inventory and logistics are greatly simplified.

Wow, that's quite incredible. May I ask you if you believe that the MOTA 3D printer at the price they are asking is feasible or not?

[NewMatter]

With any new product, it is impossible to speculate on manufacturing costs without seeing a pretty complete design. Probably the main thing to look at, rather, is the experience of the design and manufacturing team. Any team without experience in volume production of electro-mechanical devices (which can be much more involved than for purely electronic products) is going to run into a lot of unexpected issues that may significantly delay, or even completely torpedo a product.