Less than a month into their Kickstarter project to build a "friendly, affordable 3-D printer," Panda Robotics has canceled their seemingly on-track campaign for PandaBot.
"We don’t want our Kickstarter backers, those who put their money on the line for us, to settle for a beta product," the team wrote today on their blog and their Kickstarter page. The Panda Robotics Team decided to drop the project so it could make a better printer later on. They also cite interest in the project from distributors and academic institutions, which could indicate other support for the PandaBot.
A look at Kicktraq's record of PandaBot's funding shows a series of negative-bid days in the middle of the campaign, where backers actually removed their funding. The campaign would have easily reached its goal but for those days (and might have anyway). That doesn't mean they're necessarily related to the cancellation, though, and Kicktraq's Adam Clark says it's not uncommon for long-running projects to see negative days.
Panda Robotics is still targeting early 2013 as a release date for the PandaBot, and are offering backers a T-shirt and a $200 credit toward the printer when it becomes available. There's no indication what the printer will cost when it finally arrives, but the original promise to funders was a machine at the $800 level. For would-be home printers who just can't wait, the Solidoodle, and the Orca (in kit form) are available for around $1,000 or less.
