April 10, 2013
The B9 Creator v1.1 from inventor Michael Joyce has been successfully funded on Kickstarter. Last year Joyce's project received $513,422 in pledges, 10 times his original goal. And up to now he has shipped v1.0 of the B9Creator to almost 200 backers.
This year Joyce came back to Kickstarter for another round with his updated version of B9 Creator. In two weeks his project was supported by 218 backers with $290,150 in pledges.
Using a DLP projector underneath a vat of UV curing resin high resolution objects can be built one layer at a time. Joyce has made some improvements to the new B9 Creator to simplify the design and improve the quality. And all previous backer can get three "upgrade options", like slide rails and z Axis improvements and simplified process for adding resin so they can have the latest hardware.
This second around of funding is basically launched for users that have been waiting to get a B9Creator. After this round of Kickstarter, the B9 Creator will be sold via distributors, says Joyce.
Joyce keeps the hardware and software fully open source so that maker community can download the source files and experiment with higher-resolution 3D printing. In addition to online and downloadable Kit assembly instructions, the team has also produced a series of six videos detailing the assembly process step by step.
The insane details you could achieve compared to similarly priced FDM printers ensures the success of B9 Creator. In addition Joyce cooperated with a friend who develops resin so they can manage to provide it at a very reasonable price: about $99 per kilogram including shipping within the U.S., so that's around $84 a kilogram. This price is really competitive.
Often if you pledged cash for a crowdfunded product, you should be prepared to be very patient that most projects could miss their target delivery dates. All of B9 Creator first round Kickstarter rewards were shipped out around middle of September, some weeks later than their estimated end of August. But this is not too bad, since the orders they got were 10 times more than they planned. And Joyce thinks there are lessons that they could learn.
The demand for affordable personal 3D printers has skyrocketed in recent years, and higher-performance 3D printer would for sure gain the most traction. When the resin price drops we assume reliable and high resolution 3D printers would eventually take over home 3D printer market.
Posted in 3D Printers
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www.3d-EeZ.com tried top get a kickstarter but they were all about nothing... They did not think that solving such a big problem was creative enough for them Go Figure