Wow. I wonder how long it will take them to fulfill 2,500 orders? And I wonder if they were expecting such demand? Their kickstarter was only for $50,000.
Of course, as another commenter pointed out, there's precedent for huge demand for a kickstarter project like this. A similar 3D printer was kickstarted last year and raise $1.5 million.[1]
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pirate3d/the-buccaneer-....
I'm a bit skeptical of their production timeline: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/817/031/9e4b8b3d2d62...
It looks like they have a lot of potential roadblocks between now and delivering 3,000+ units. They're looking to bring on a lot of people: assembly team, testers, etc.
If it's delayed 6 months, hopefully it'll still be a success.
$300 is just about my impulse purchase price for really sweet "toys", whereas $500+ feels like real money. If I weren't already "into" 3D printing already then something at this price may very well have been what convinced me to jump in just to play around with it.