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  1. #11
    Technician
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    Quote Originally Posted by mattgajkowski View Post
    Ah yes, it always comes back to the price! We'll be covering that in detail in the campaign, so hang tight.

    Regarding the WiFi, not to give away too much, but Tiko doesn't require a connection during printing. More on that soon, as well!
    I genuinely wish you luck Matt!!! I've seen the demands and comments from many kickstarter backers and many of them are irrational and absurd. I'd certainly hate to be on the receiving end of that.

    As for the price, you can always throw in extra freebies if you have money left over but you can never eek more money out of your customer after the pledge is over and done with.

  2. #12
    Engineer-in-Training
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    I don't know what is behind that fancy white shell, but all I can think is that either they've stumbled onto some super cheap technology that no-one knows about, or their cost estimates and margins are way out of reality.

    Wifi/USB aside, quality stepper motors can only be had so cheap, same for other components, belts, extruders etc. We're not even including costs outside of the printer such as packaging, printed documentation (if any) accessories, support, heck, are these cases injection moulded? What's the manufacturing costs associated with it? Even after sales support, RTAT?! I mean, unless they've planned on ordering insane quantities of parts that they could get them cheap enough, I don't see how they could sell this unit at $179 and still break even, let alone turn a profit. We've seen what's happened to other companies who've tried to break the sub $200 mark, Makible, ez3d, hell, even Pirate3D, and it didn't quite work out well for them...

  3. #13
    Technician
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    Mar 2015
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    Quote Originally Posted by mattgajkowski View Post
    ...We'll be doing an AMA on Reddit during the campaign, where we'll be happy to geek out on all the details, but the tl;dr version is that USB wasn't as cheap as you'd think, and WiFi chips have gotten much less expensive than you'd think.
    That is simply not true. If you are getting 802.11x chips for under a penny each, it is still more expensive than USB.USB just requires having a portion of your PCB used for a card edge connector, and using some of the processing of your MCU to bit bang USB. Thus it costs the board area for the card edge connection, nothing more. If you chose a reasonable multi core MCU you can get the USB bit bang software with a MIT license (thus no restrictions).The MCU to use would be a Parallax Propeller P8X32A, as it is an 8 core MCU that does have a good MIT licensed USB stack that uses bit banging already available (the USB does take 2 cores, that still leaves you 6 to work with), and it is the easiest to work with for programming the control firmware, it is 32 bit, and it is nearly as low cost as a much more limited AVR 8-Bit MCU.So do not try to sell that WiFi was a low cost solution, or that USB costs more than we would think. I have worked with USB on the P8X32A, so I know better.

  4. #14
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    Mar 2015
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    Though I do genuinely hope that the project is a success, as it will provide a low cost 3D-Printer for future people. And it will not require writing all of your own firmware and interface software, and design all the hardware to keep a 3D printer under $150. These are the reasons I designed my own, wrote all of the Firmware/Software (some of it three times, anticipating future changes in the controller used (I will be switching to a Parralax Propeller P8X32A eventually for the controller.

  5. #15
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
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    Jul 2014
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    so onboard cache for the print file.
    That works :-) And gcode files are pretty small.

    It's certainly one worth watching :-)

    There's some interesting software for opensource deltas that I'd be tempted to get one of these to play with.
    Last edited by curious aardvark; 03-26-2015 at 10:23 AM.

  6. #16
    March 30th is the day. They will be launching on Kickstarter. I am looking forward to see how this goes. Will you be backing this project? Why or why not?

  7. #17
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
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    Not - after makibox, I don't do crowd funding any more.

    Once it's up and running, shipping in decent amounts, and proven to work. I'll start saving my pennies up for one :-)

  8. #18
    Engineer-in-Training
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    Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
    Not - after makibox, I don't do crowd funding any more.

    Once it's up and running, shipping in decent amounts, and proven to work. I'll start saving my pennies up for one :-)
    Agreed! I really want to, but look at the Makibox and how it failed. Admidtidly, the Makibox looked like it cut corners to get down to that cost and that still wasn't enough. I just can't see how they will make this a profitable device

  9. #19
    Student john3322's Avatar
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    I read the reviews of the product and i found that these Tiko3d Printer are really good. Tiko3d at cheap price.

  10. #20
    Engineer-in-Training
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    Well they are on Kickstarter now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ody-3d-printer

    Honestly, it looks very well put together, though I'm still not entirely sold on it. With no heated bed, I wonder how it will print ABS. I'm not a fan of the wording they've used for the technical info, frankly, there's little information on how or what they are using to make it work, and seeing those words 'patent-pending' alone makes me cringe. But overall, I wish them luck. It will be interesting to watch.

    Edit.....reading through it a bit more, and frankly, some of their wording is a bit far fetched....they claim their hot end is the only one that can extrude PLA without active cooling, and that a cooling fan on a hot end is both expensive and reduces print volume...
    Last edited by MiniMadRyan; 03-30-2015 at 12:57 PM.

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