Yet another 3D printer on Kickstarter, and this one is quite interesting. Well, the concept is interesting, and the promotional video is, uh, “interesting.”
The Japicain Revolution 3D Printer — the J-Rev — is a “Fused Filament Fabrication” (FFF) technology printer with an unusual twist from most of the other similar home desktop printers. Most printers in this category are built as a box-like structure, where the extruder moves up the Z-axis as it prints, until it reaches the maximum height of the structure itself. The J-Rev, instead, has the extruder attached to the top frame of the 3D printer, and it’s that frame of the 3D printer itself that moves up and down.
Why would they do this? To create a slim, portable printer when not in use, where the top of the printer collapses down in an accordion-like fashion, flattening the entire printer into a briefcase size unit. Hard to explain, but you already understand what I’m saying since you’ve no doubt looked at the animated image above.
This 3D printer can print at up to 300 mm/s at 20 Micron layer heights, and they promise that if their Kickstarter “stretch goal” is reached they will double the speed and cut the layer height in half. As of this writing, they’ve got five of eight pledge spots left to purchase the fully-assembled, standard sized (12 x 8) printer at $1,850. The next pledge level is $2,000, and it goes up from there. Pledge $3,500 and you can gt a 24 x 24 printer bed.
This project is not raising money anywhere near what the more standard, and less expensive RigidBot we highlighted earlier this morning is raising. Maybe the concept of an extruder attached to a moving frame is too uncertain a concept to pluck a couple grand down for until its proven. But maybe it’s also the video. My sincere apologies to the people over at Japica, but I have to say there is something odd about the video. It’s too scripted, too dramatic, and the “acting” by some is just kind of weird. (And, I just deleted the sentence I had written to describe it; I can’t do it without sounding a bit mean-spirited.) If the video wasn’t such a “production” and just someone at the Japica company looking into the camera and telling us more about the printer itself, I think more money would have been raised.
Here’s the video. I’d like to hear some reader comments on it. Tell me if I’m being unfair or not.