Kickstarter

A lot has happened during these three weeks of our Kickstarter campaign. We have been blown away by the overwhelming support we have received from everyone. We have been able to witness first-hand – for the first time – the sheer excitement and enthusiasm that exists for a 3d printer for the masses. We’ve been featured on BNN, the National Post, CTV News Network, TechCrunch, The National, and a myriad of blog posts and tech articles throughout the Internet. We had no idea any of this would happen, and at times it felt a bit surreal. We had to shake ourselves, and wonder “is this really happening?” All of this makes us feel that, just maybe, we could be that little engine that could.

But amidst all the excitement, we’ve had to make a very difficult decision. It breaks our hearts to do it, but we’ve decided to end our Kickstarter campaign early. Please let us explain why.

In the past weeks, we’ve received requests from institutions like universities, resellers, distributors and individuals who want to buy final PandaBots in bulk. This is wonderful, but we don’t want our Kickstarter backers, those who put their money on the line for us, to settle for a beta product so we can build a better product for all those who waited. Our wish is for our backers’ experience with Panda Robotics to be free from the inevitable concerns that arise from beta products. This will ensure you will be able to save your money and purchase the PandaBot when the final product is ready. To achieve these ends, we are in the process of seeking alternative forms of funding in order to manufacture and certify the production run.

It goes without saying that we are truly grateful to all our backers on Kickstarter. Thank you. It really is your belief in us and your support of our vision that makes us want to succeed. The last thing we want to do is to let you down. We will be providing to all of our backers a Panda Robotics t-shirt and a Panda Robotics sticker as a thank you for supporting us during our Kickstarter campaign, plus a $200 coupon that can be applied towards a PandaBot after we have gone through final certifications and can promise you a product you'll love and enjoy for a long time.

For now, please stay with us. We can't do this without you. We’d love to share with you our progress over the following months. Please follow us on Twitter(http://twitter.com/pandarobotics), join us on Facebook(http://www.facebook.com/pandarobotics) or contact us with your email(contact@pandarobotics.com) and we will add you to a mailing list for updates.

With all of your support, we hope to have production PandaBots available for you in the first half of 2013.

One of the things that keeps us fairly busy in the office is some of the R&D work we're doing. A good chunk of this involves making test rigs to do quick proof of concept work -- if we can get something working with 3D printed and laser cut parts, it's a good indicator that we can get it working with more advanced fabrication methods. Here's an example of that process -- we had primarily been working with 3mm filaments, but knew we would like to move down to 1.7mm filament.

Doing a quick mock-up Bowden test unit confirmed that there weren't any immediately show-stoppers with moving down to the smaller filament. It also confirmed our suspicion that we'd want a little more torque in the motor unit. This is useful validation as we begin to move into the design-for-manufacturing process.

What you're actually seeing in the photo is a couple of bowden clips connected to an extruder tube. The clips are providing a quick and secure mechanical lock for the bowden tube, which has a reasonable amount of force being applied to it by the stepper motor, via the filament. The whole thing looks fairly simple, but it took about four design revisions to get the clip that holds the extruder tube right.

And, here's some images of new prints: Yoda, a factory and the Cube-Sphere decorative object from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:31343.

"Many of you have asked us for more video of a print in progress. The CBC was just in the office late last week and took some great close-up and time-lapse video.

There is also some video available via the National Post -- we actually threw the 'bot into the back of a cab and headed out to their offices for that. Both videos have done a fantastic job in capturing how the PandBot operates, and we're happy to share them with you:

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Shows/The%20National/ID/2295097298/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYfzfvWT4Y

We spent a good chunk of yesterday working on some models and prints of letters. You can see a few of the results here.

We're in the process of printing out yet more models, but in the mean time, here are more close-ups.

The shot-glass with the diagonal hashtag was for a couple of promo events we did with Ladies Learning Code -- it's their logo.

We stopped the squirrel towards the end because it was late and we wanted to go home.