A few months ago I backed the widely popular kickstarter campaign for the 3Doodler, a hand-held “3D Printer”. The team at Wobble works surely got what they asked for as the project surpassed their funding goals by more than $2.3 Million. With a total of 26,000 backers fulfilling the campaign certainly had to be a logistical challenge so I was excited when the project update last month noted that my November shipment was headed out only a few weeks late. For Kickstarter campaigns it seems running entirely on time is a big anomaly and any project that is fairly close to schedule is really doing a great job.
The main package was very non-descript, the return address was an apartment in Manhattan which implies it was sent from the personal account of one of the project founders. It is great to see the boot-strapping involved in such a runaway success.
Inside the package was where the professional level quality started to kick in. The Doodler packaging was great and no chance it was getting busted in shipment.
My set included 3 packets of ABS color rods. This of course is the real genius behind the 3Doodler (in a business sense), each pack sells for $10 on the 3Doodler website. Again with over 26,000 backers, assuming each of them averages 1 refill that is another $250k in sales for 3Doodler. Not a bad little business.
With limited time, and plastic, to melt I wanted to decide what to make before burning through a bunch of plastic. Even so I had a chance to turn on the pen and get a feel for it. What stuck me at first was how light the pen is. My kitchen scale shows it at a measly 4.5oz.
I’ll be prepping some more in the coming weeks and sitting down over the holiday’s to play with my new toy. As soon as I have a useable model I’ll be writing more about how well the pen works.
