Issues I see: 1. The vacuum and laser alone would cost more than what they’re asking for the entire printer.
Edit: Lasers on these types of machines are 100-200 W and cheaper than I remember.
2. These things would sell like hotcakes for 10x the price. They’d need the extra money to ramp up production. They should charge it so they can keep up with demand or they’ll be bought up by companies unwilling to wait.
3. They don’t go into technology specifics in the video or the description.
4. Explanation for why other companies haven’t done it is we have unique experience and know robotics.
5. They’ve produced prototypes, but don’t have a final product built to reproduce quickly and cheaply
From the description provided and the video it seems like they’re using Direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) or Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS). The description talks about revolutionary new technology. You can tell it isn’t SLS from the way the layers are solidified before the next layer is added. The founders also appear to have a background in thermal spray, so it could be a new/unconventional process.
A few hundred watt laser is about $1000(ebay prices), full delta style(I’m guessing based on a single shot of the belt drive) arms/head/etc including electronics, $1000… Case/frame/PSU/etc… $1000… And that still leaves them with $1000 for the feed system(Could be as simple as a compressed air driven venturi feeder with a vibration system to keep the feedstock from clogging, if they’ve got the bugs out of it) and that still leaves them $500 for profit.
I suspect that it’s mostly a scale/get their name out there/develop manufacturing process project, not make any real money kickstarter and the final/next round printers will cost more and be much better and sell what would effectively be a rough prototype for little more than the cost of the parts.
I’d like to see a lot more detail about the machine, final resolution, etc . The finish looks pretty rough(The bottle opener for example was clearly post-build machined) , but no worse than injection molded vs. FFM on the plastic printers.
I think if they are funded, they’ll come close to regretting it as they’ll have a shoe-string budget but it might just be possible.
Add in shipping and packaging, Kickstarter fees, buffers, cost for customer service and replacements, wages for themselves (5 people), management and legal costs (this is a company, after all), rent for manufacturing and assembly space, costs for equipment and tools as well as cost and time for R&D; and then see how much “profit” they are actually making on each of the $4k printers. My educated guess is that once you factor in all of those costs, they will be losing money with each machine they ship.
What type of laser are they using? A 100-200w co2 laser is cheap. But it won’t do a damn thing to metal. If you look up YaG which is the type of laser your going to need its about 3200$ for a 100w from aliexpress.