[Arm-netbook] A biggish 3D printer on kickstarter

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 9:24 AM, Lauri Kasanen <cand at gmx.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Oct 2014 21:33:42 +0100
> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 12:58 PM, peter green <plugwash at p10link.net> wrote:
>>
>> >> I was under the impression flex funding implies they had
>> >> all the resources they needed. So even an order for 1 unit
>> >> will get built because they are already building it.
>>
>>  ... in other words this is not a crowd-funding campaign at all, but a
>> shopping opportunity.
>
> You're missing the more cynical angle: they don't have enough to make
> the product, *and* they don't think they'd reach the goal in a
> traditional crowdfunding model.
>
> With this they take what they can get, but the product may not get made
> until/if they get more funding from somewhere else.

 true... those are always the two extremes: they did everything, they
worked out the qty 1 pricing and multiplied it up, they did all the
research correctly into supply, they're utilising the crowdfunding
merely as a shop OR they have no idea, they lied, they are
incompetent, they cannot be trusted, they don't know what they're
doing, they are knowingly misleading everyone...

 so it's up to you (individually) to make some reasonably sound
judgement as to which side of those two extremes you wish to believe
to be true.

 personally if they have a working model then i'm inclined towards the
former.  also their location would tend to indicate a lower materials
cost.

 it would help if they indicated some sort of interaction with the
open hardware community where their competence and committment could
be assessed, along with videos of it in operation.

l.