I hope that all of you are enjoying a strong start to this still relatively new year. We have encountered a few difficulties that I would like to brief you on and ask for your continued support.
As many of you recall, we have been in the process of beta testing our 3D printer, the Desktop Factory 125ci, since late July 2007. While the printer performed extremely well with regards to reliability, running over 60 days without a single failure, we did receive feedback that our support structure removal and waste management needed some improvement. At the same time, we encountered an issue in our lab testing that we had not seen before, an intermittent clogging of our aperture, which is a problem requiring an on-site service call. We initially assumed that our engineering activities may have been causing these clogs — but then they occurred at the customer site as well.
Along with these two points of critical data, we have continued to collect market feedback from a variety of sources. We have found something that was somewhat counter-intuitive, at least to us. Our most recent data suggests that a low-priced 3D printer will need to exhibit a greater level of reliability than the current, more expensive offerings. Hopefully at least some of you are thinking — What? Why is that? Well, the number one reason given is that many of our users may be new to 3D printing and will not necessarily have the skills or a dedicated operator to insure the system performs at the highest possible level. We have also been told that the reliability expectation may be analogous to desktop publishing, where the 2D printer actually was more reliable than the costly copier that it began to replace.
No matter how we look at the situation we need to delay our expanded beta and launch to make the necessary improvements on the waste management and the support removal. We have run extended testing to identify all of the root causes of aperture clogs and we believe we have a very promising fix for that problem too. What we need now is time. We need time to fully test the improved imaging approach to eliminate aperture clogs and time to engineer in a greater degree of reliability.
Therefore, we are delaying any further placements of Desktop Factory until the 3rd quarter of 2008. I know this may be a disappointment to many of you who have waited such a long time for this important technology. Believe me when I say that our team is terribly concerned about this delay. However, to a person, we are committed to providing you with the best possible low-cost 3D printing experience. That means spending this additional time and resource to resolve the immediate issue and make the necessary reliability improvements to our printer.
For those of you who have orders on file with us — we continue to be committed to the terms of those documents. For our newest customers who have placed a deposit on their reservation order for the 125ci — we will deliver on our promise — just somewhat later than planned. And, we will keep these updates coming to you every 4 to 6 weeks. We thank you for your continued support and consideration.
GLOBAL RECOGNITION
The accolades for Desktop Factory continue to come in. The most recent award is from a new French Forum called Netxplorateur. This august body made up of politicians and business leaders will review breakthrough technologies in development or recent market entrants each year to cull out those that will have the greatest impact on our lives. They met for the first time February 14-15th at the Senate in France, and Desktop Factory was selected as a top 10 technology for 2008. They were very excited to have us in attendance as we presented the product, the near term potential and the future promise of low-cost 3D printing. I also had the opportunity to meet Bernard Charles, the CEO of Dassault, and hear him speak about the virtual promise of 3D. All in all, it was a very informative and educational event!
BTW, to really bring the future potential of low-cost 3D printing to life — I demonstrated our remote control car as you can see at right!
THANKS FOR THE FILES
You exceeded my expectations when I requested your typical .stl file in our last newsletter! As I stated, we need to begin to build a broader library of test files to make certain that we are able to address the most important applications. Well, you sent them in by the hundreds and while some of the files were extremely complex and may present a challenge to Desktop Factory, the majority were right up our alley. It will be quite some time until we get a chance to print all of these objects — but we really do appreciate your response. I can safely say our library is more than adequate for now!
WHAT WEBSITES AND BLOGS DO YOU FREQUENT?
As a 3D user or aficionado, you probably have some favorite sites or blogs. I am thinking of unique places like Freedom of Creation or Ponoko — where the designers of the world can innovate to their hearts' content. Along with those, I suspect that many of you leverage sites like TurboSquid and DAZ when looking for specialty files that you don't have the time or interest in creating. I have recently come across a few places like 3dswim.com, which seems to be a compilation site for resources and information. But this is just the tip of the iceberg — we have all seen a tremendous growth of interest in 3D printing and much of that can probably be attributed to the increase in educational sites, content sites and specialized blogs.
We would like to know where you go for information and where you share your thoughts on this amazing industry. Also, who does the best job with layout and organization of their sites? Please share your favorites and not so favorites — tell us what you would like to have available to you on a site — this input will be used to improve our own site over time, and it will also help us select the right types of partner sites to link to in the future. As always, we appreciate your assistance!
PROGRESS DOES CONTINUE
It is good to provide you with our latest outlook on the technology front. Taking this additional time to make the recommended enhancements and placing increased focus on a higher level of reliability are the right activities for us in the near term. In November, before the height of the holiday season, I told you that we were looking forward to our launch in the second quarter of 2008. Now that date has moved out to the third quarter, at which time we should be in a position for a controlled launch or extended beta. When we are confident that the product works as designed, and the early installations give us the green light, we will move forward with a full launch at the end of the year.
Reservation orders are still coming in — we are not marketing the printer yet but a few new people find us on the web every week or so and sign up to be one of the first early adopters. We have just over 350 orders at this point, and we are truly looking forward to the time when we are able to provide each of you with your own Desktop Factory.
Thanks again for your time and your support of our company and product. We look forward to hearing from you regarding your favorite websites and blogs. If you have a question, just send it to us at info@desktopfactory.com and we will usually respond within 24 hours.
Cathy Lewis
CEO
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I hope that all of you are enjoying a strong start to this still relatively new year. We have encountered a few difficulties that I would like to brief you on and ask for your continued support.
The accolades for Desktop Factory continue to come in. The most recent award is from a new French Forum called 
It is good to provide you with our latest outlook on the technology front. Taking this additional time to make the recommended enhancements and placing increased focus on a higher level of reliability are the right activities for us in the near term. In November, before the height of the holiday season, I told you that we were looking forward to our launch in the second quarter of 2008. Now that date has moved out to the third quarter, at which time we should be in a position for a controlled launch or extended beta. When we are confident that the product works as designed, and the early installations give us the green light, we will move forward with a full launch at the end of the year.