I think he is a little over his head, he most likely will run out of money before he has completed what he has to do, I don't think he set his goal or cost high enough to start with, the payments on his machine rent Etc will be his biggest problem, and he did not get the machine he needed 40" against a 50" is a big difference
I looked at the Kickstarter updates and they are doing some good work, and the machines should be good
I would not believe that he got hit with any metal tax at all that is just an excuse, the materials he is using is all produced in the USA so has nothing to do with imported materials, if that is what his supplier is telling him than he needs to change supplier he has some serious amounts of material and deals can be made when buying those kind of volumes of material