An irritation-free razor that gives a close shave has been a dream for thousands of years. [Gillette] came close, and with multiple blades came fifty-fifty closer, but all razors today are however but sharpened steel dragged across the skin. This is the 21st century, and of course there'southward a concept for a laser razor pandering for your moola. Nosotros recently covered the Skarp laser razor and its Kickstarter campaign, and today the campaign has been shut down.

The email sent out to all contributors to the Skarp campaign follows:

How-do-you-do,

This is a message from Kickstarter'southward Integrity team. We're writing to notify yous that the Skarp Laser Razor project has been suspended, and your pledge has been canceled.

After requesting and reviewing additional material from the creator of the projection, nosotros've concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered equally rewards. Appropriately, all funding has been stopped and backers volition non exist charged for their pledges. No further activeness is required on your part. Suspensions cannot exist undone.

We take the integrity of the Kickstarter system very seriously. We only append projects when we discover evidence that our rules are existence violated.

Regards, Kickstarter Integrity Team

Information technology only took viii hours for the Skarp team to relaunch their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. As of this writing, over 900 people (ostensibly from the 20,000 backers of the original Kickstarter campaign) accept pledged to the new campaign.

Although we will never know exactly why Kickstarter suspended the original Skarp entrada, the reason given by the Kickstarter Integrity Team points to the lack of a working image, one of the requirements for technology campaigns on Kickstarter. Interestingly, Skarp did post a few videos of their razor working. These videos were white balanced poorly enough to look like they were filmed through light-green cellophane, a technique some have claimed was used to hide the actual mechanism behind the image'due south method of cutting hair. A few commenters on the Skarp Kickstarter campaign – and hither on Hackaday – accept guessed the Skarp prototype does not use lasers, but instead a heated length of nichrome wire. While this would burn down hair off, the color of the wire would be a dull crimson when filmed in any normal lighting conditions. It is causeless the poor quality of the Skarp paradigm videos is an attempt to hide the fact they do not have a working prototype.

The Skarp laser razor. Source
The Skarp laser razor. Source

Skarp'south motion to Indiegogo has been lauded by some – by and large in the comments section of the Indiegogo campaign – and has been derided on every other forum on the Internet. Indiegogo is usually seen as the concluding refuge of crowdfunding scam artist, but there are a few legitimate reasons why a campaign would choose to go to Indiegogo. Kickstarter is non available for campaign founders in all countries, and for some, debiting a menu immediately, instead of subsequently the campaign end like Kickstarter does, is a legitimate crowdfunding strategy.

But for a crowdfunding campaign to exist suspended on Kickstarter and immediately move to Indiegogo? This almost never ends well. One of the nigh famous examples, the Anonabox, had its Kickstarter entrada suspended afterward information technology was found the creator was just rebadging an off-the-shelf router. The Anonabox then moved over to Indiegogo where it raised over $80,000. Already the entrada for the Skarp Laser Razor has raised $135,000 USD from Indiegogo, after having its Kickstarter campaign raised over $4 Meg. No, Skarp won't be one of the virtually successful engineering science Kickstarter campaigns of all time. We tin can only hope it won't be one of Indiegogo's virtually successful campaigns.