In business sometimes you invent a new product, but other times you improve on an existing product. The latter approach is that taken by the developers of the Lix 3D printing pen.
It’s not surprising that someone would attempt to duplicate 3Doodler’s massive success: the earlier company had raised an astonishing USD$2,344,134 by selling over 25,000 units.
But how to compete? The LixPen team worked on a couple of factors: weight and aesthetics. We think they’ve succeeded tremendously, as there is no doubt of the performance specifications and the unit is clearly quite beautiful. It’s also designed to be easy to use: it requires only a USB port for power.
There’s another factor at play here, we believe: cost. It seems that whenever a 3D printing related product is offered, the most successful ventures are typically those with low cost. While the Lix is an expensive pen, it is a very inexpensive way to get into 3D printing.
That said, 3D pens are quite limited in what they can do - and the work is all on you and your arm to “print” objects. However, as you can see in this image, it is straightforward to extrude on top of existing objects to easily form interesting 3D shapes.
If you’d like to secure one of these fascinating pens, you’d best head over to Kickstarter.
Via Kickstarter and LixPen