3D printing pens have become all the rage as of late on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. First it was the 3Doodler raising well over $2 million. Now it is the LIX Pen, which has raised over £700,000, with 5 days still remaining on their campaign.
One problem with Kickstarter campaigns, is that many times, only a very general prototype of the advertised product exists. At the same time, when you publish a campaign, there is no telling how many devices will be pre-ordered by backers of the project, unless a limit is set. These are two issues that appear to have come back to haunt LIX.
LIX appears to have entered into the start of their Kickstarter campaign with an idea, and a very basic prototype. Their business plan seems to be changing and evolving based on two main factors. One is feedback from their backers, and the other is the huge demand that they have unexpectedly received for their future product.
LIX has announced that they are going to be hiring an engineering company to work on the newest prototype of the pen. The engineering firm that is being assigned to this project, will need more time in order to create a high quality product. They expect to have to redesign some of the aspects of the LIX Pen, to prepare it for mass-production.
On top of this, the dates for backer shipments will be changing considerably. These changes are not yet reflected on the LIX Kickstarter page, but we have confirmed the new dates. The new estimated shipment dates are as follows:
– £43 reward – One LIX 3D pen Black matte or grey matte + 1 bags of mixed color plastic. – estimated delivery Jan 2015
– £73 reward – One LIX 3D pen Black matte or grey matte + 2 bags of mixed color plastic. – estimated delivery Jan 2015
– £82 reward – One LIX 3D pen Black matte or grey matte + 3 bags of mixed color plastic. – estimated delivery Jan 2015
– £593 reward – Be the first who will receive the Beta version of LIX Pen + 3 Bags of mixed colour plastic! – estimated delivery Oct 2014
All of the other rewards are still expected to be delivered on their planned delivery dates.
The LIX Pen still has a long way to go before they have mass-produced a finished product. I have seen some of the private backer videos of the pen in action, and in my opinion, it prints way too slow. It definitely doesn’t seem to print as fast as the original Kickstarter video shows. Whether or not this will be improved upon by the engineering team that has been hired, is yet to be seen.
Discuss these changes to the Kickstarter campaign of the Lix Pen in the discussion thread dedicated to this article on 3DPB.com
