Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I must admit there were times that the Pancakebot was about as elegant with pancake batter as The Jetson's Rosey the Robot was serving pineapple upsidedown cake a top of Mr. Spacely's head. At least Rosey made George and Jane's family life a bit easier the same can not be said of the Pancakebot in its current production state. Review notes for ‘makers’ and non-makers: THIS ITEM WILL NOT WORK WITHOUT AN SD CARD -- NO SD CARD OR SAMPLE IMAGES ARE INCLUDED. Be sure you have one on hand and access to the Internet, and SD card reader and a Windows or Mac OSX machine when you want to make pancakes with the PancakeBot. Other items that could be useful to you on your Pancakebot journey: a good sifter (to help insure your raw ingredients are lump free), a funnel (to help neatly move your batter into the bottle), a thin silicone spatula (to help with batter refills changes), a short wide juice glass (to hold the Dispenser Bottle while filling – instead of attempting to fill while on the Gantry – and allows use of both hands to hold funnel and pour batter), very thin toothpick or cake tester (or even a food safe clean paper clip -> to clear partially cooked/dried batter from the dispenser bottle nozzle -especially after removing drip cap multiple times), a metric (measuring device to insure the nozzle is optimal distance from the griddle), at least 4 dominos (to elevate the griddle to proper extruding height) and an extra wide tapered edge pancake turner. Makers….. You will love tinkering with this CNC pancake extruder. You will enjoy learning the idiosyncrasies of: extruding with batter of differing viscosity, shrinkage that from drawing lines too thinly, spread that occurs at differing rates due to factors such as heat of griddle, thickness of drawn lines, addition of fill components, or batter ingredient ratios, coupled with pressure settings air pump inconsistency and improperly sized griddles. You will enjoy engineering your way through several hours and bowls of pancake mix to get a decently accurate design. This is the perfect device to save you cash. Heck, if you go with the Biquick recipe posted in the PancakeBot forum, you will be spending less than $10 for more than 12 hours’ worth of pancake tinkering fun. As opposed to what the same time spend using a 3d printer would cost you in filament. Any mistakes and sucuess for that matter are edible fun and you won't have to wait more than a few minutes to enjoy your ertuded artwork. Where as it often takes several hours to see how poorly a job your far more expensive 3-d printer did with your artwork. As a ‘maker’ you will be prepared to have several additional items not typically need to make pancakes to engineer your way through it – loving every minute. Ok, there is no Z axis here – but if you make the proper batter they can loft quite nicely. I can also guarantee you will need your technical chops to make this do your bidding to make anything close to what is seen in the videos on a regular basis. As another review mentioned, the gantry is cable and connector need extra love to make proper connections for sending the proper ‘home’ coordinates, among other things. Non Makers ... ( and everyone else) There have been few items I have wanted to like as much as this one. I really did want to like this. It looked so cool. I had not just seen videos of it working online. I had seen a demo model working live in front of me just days before I purchased this one. I had such high hopes. If you are not a ‘maker’ or are not in any way interested in paying money to be BETA tester, then this is not yet for you. It looks oh, so very cool. The video reviews you have seen, they look awesome. Right? I know. I too have seen them. I have even in person watched the inventor crank out Eiffel tower after Eiffel tower and wonderfully ornate computer generated lattices. He spoke of the pressurized system that allowed for the batter to be pushed evenly through. He spoke of the other future possibilities like extruding icing. It all is still plausible – just NOT a reality with the machine and configuration that I received for my $340. There are in my opinion a few major flaws left in this iteration of the device I received were: the specialized pressure system – simply did not work in any consistent (no batter ever entered the tube or pump - support wanted to spend a LOT of time asking if this was the case - so it must be common - it just was not in my case); and the griddle that was included did not meet the requirements for height without outside modification. Minor issues that can be resolved through slight modification of support website or inclusion in shipment box. 1) Lack of SD card with sample file to allow for verification of hardware configuration. This would be less of an issue if there were files on the PancakeBot website that were created by and distributed by Storebound to ‘check’ all of the Pancakebot systems. As it is none are specifically marked as such an even images used in marketing copy – when uploaded to Pancakebot are too large to fit the griddle or too complex. Ideally a sample extrusion file – a test print of sorts to assist in configuration settings and finding proper batter consistency. 2) The drip cover be redesigned to have an internal pin/peg that insert in the nozzle canal to keep it free and clear. 3) Sort images available on website between those that have been actually been successfully printed and those that have not. It simply is NOT cool to download files that can melt the tip off of your bottle because they don’t respect the edge restraints of the griddle, because they were designed by the community – but you have NO way to know that ahead of time. 4) Make clear in the instruction the lid and suction tube should be removed before dispenser bottle is removed from its holder, for the drip cap to be removed. Also be sure to NOT tilt the dispenser while doing so. (Just an entire rethinking of this might be in order.) 5) Make the Batter Dispenser of material that is heat resistance to at least 450F. (This would definitely fix the ruined bottle issue – and while you are at it – how about making a few extra available for purchase, would be great for easy color changes) 6) Correct the firmware so that PancakeBot does not create lines each time PancakeBot leaves or returns to the home coordinates. (or perhaps better manufacturing quality control – which ever seems to be the most common cause for the errors.) Here is how the Pancakebot measured up to the descriptive bullet points here on the Amazon.com listing: "Proprietary batter dispensing system will draw your perfect customized pancake every time" Proprietary batter dispensing system - check. (We will talk more about the good/bad/ugly of that later) Draw your perfect customized pancake every time - NOT EVEN CLOSE. (again more detail later) "Software included to trace any image on your computer" Not included in the box. Nope. None. Nada. There is a free download for Windows 7-10 ➤ 32bit and Mac OSX 10.7+ ➤ x64 on their website or github [...] . Again, if you are a 'maker' this is perfect for you as you can create your own fork etc. For anyone not running those listed operating systems - you will be out of luck at the moment. "Non-stick electric griddle with removable probe included” Yes, it was actually included in the box. The non-stick worked like a dream thankfully. The drip hole in the surface made for quick easy clearing away of the thousands of mistake pancake dots that the machine produced into the drip trap below. Unfortunately, it did not meet the exact high and width requirements. The provided grill still prompted the need to alter the legs or base of the griddle to line up properly with Pancakebot. We placed a domino below each leg. "BPA-free batter dispenser" Can't say I sent it out for testing, so I will take their work on this one. I do however wish it were made of heat resistant material so that the tip would not melt when it returns home and sits next to the lip edge of the grill on medium. Bottom Line: At this price point if I did not have experience with other more expensive less reliable devices (3-D printers) this would be an absolute disappointment. However, when you take a minute to think of it as more of a learning opportunity. If you set proper expectations, such as that you will NOT out the box in 5 minutes be printing perfect eiffel towers,- but that you might after 12 hour hours print decent smiley face pancakes. This would make the ownership/purchase of this product a much more satisfactory one.