Canada’s Panda Robotics Launches High-Quality, Affordable 3D Printer for the Masses

3D printers went from science fiction to reality over a long period of time. But it seems like out of nowhere, they suddenly became ready for the mass consumer.

One Canadian firm is making them more ready than ever. Toronto’s Panda Robotics wants consumers to be able to buy a high quality, user friendly 3D printer for $800—far less than a gimmicky so-called-3D television.

And they’re doing it through crowdfunding. Today they launched a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign. They’ve already raised more than $6,000, so it should be a breeze for them to meet their goal.

The Canadian company’s slogan is simple and earnest: “3D printing for everyone.”

“Developments in technology, manufacturing techniques, and logistics allow us to sell an advanced printer for the price of a tablet so there really can be one on every desk and in every home,” Panda Robotics says. “We’re here to shake things up and bring consumer electronics pricing to 3D printing so that the future is now.”

They emphasize quality, saying that their printer is rigid, quiet, and thoroughly tested. Oh, and not ugly:

Construction techniques and materials were chosen to make it exceptionally stable, robust, and quiet … Thanks to our innovations, the PandaBot is self-calibrating and will print straight out of the box. … We’ve designed the PandaBot to look great. It looks like it belongs on your desk whether you’re an architect, an advertising executive, or an art student. By making a beautiful product we can drag 3D printing out of the batch processing era and make it personal.

 “We didn’t just want to make incremental improvements to available 3D printers,” the company affirms. “We wanted to revolutionize the industry.”

But there is one minor problem.

“Watching your objects take shape is a little too mesmerizing,” Panda Robotics confesses. “Our design team still gets sucked in to watching prints and we’ve had our prototype working in the office for nearly five months.”