While the several existing 3D printing pen ventures appear to be successful, CreoPop hopes to shake things up with a breakthrough technology.
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The Lix 3D Pen
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.
Read MoreYet Another 3D Printing Pen: swissPen
After the monstrous success of 3Doodler, others hope to duplicate their success, including the 3D Printed Pen that replicated much of 3Doodler's design. Now we see another: swissPen, made by Groupe JL Monnin, based in, of course, Switzerland.
The swissPen, which sells for CHF 95.00 (USD$103), is a handheld extruder that accepts PLA and ABS plastic "strands". The operation is entirely manual: you "draw in the air" to gradually create an object. Flat, 2D objects are the easiest to create, while larger, 3D objects require much time and a steady hand.
One interesting handheld technique we hadn't realized is the ability to "glue" 2D parts together with the pen to create 3D structures, as you can see in this video:
We can't tell you much more about this simple device; it's not clear what filament diameter is required, nor any estimate of battery life, which we suspect is pretty low for these devices as quite a bit of heat must be generated to melt the filament.
While handheld pen extruders such as the swissPen are interesting and even useful in certain situations, they are not 3D printers because there are no digital controls. Nevertheless, we suspect 3D printer owners should have one in their toolkit for demonstrations and model repairs.
Via Swiss 3D Print
3Doodler - A 3D Pen Printer
It's billed as the first "3D printing pen", and we believe it is indeed the first handheld 3D printer that you can purchase.
Wait, "handheld 3D printer"? That's precisely what it is. The device is held in your hand and slowly waved through 3D space. As it moves, it extrudes melted thermoplastic, just like an extruder. In a sense, YOU are the extrude mechanism.
The product has just been launched on Kickstarter with a very low price of USD$75. Other combos are available with additional plastic material. Anyone could afford this.
We've seen over the past few years many variations of extruders and plastic deposition approaches, but this one is truly unique: there is no mechanism. With that there are advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages include very low cost, due to the absence of mechanical bits, and a dramatically easy way for the public to 3D print. They simply pick up the device and start "3D drawing".
Disadvantages are several: as the extruder is human controlled, it will be massively inaccurate. There will be few industrial parts printed with the 3Doodler. Precise replication of an object is impossible - you can only "print" something once. We suspect thick objects with large amounts of infill will be infrequent as the pen operator would likely get bored or tired of repetitive fill patterns.
More than likely, most users of 3Doodler will simply draw 2D objects in a single line of filament. In fact, 3Doodler seems to focus on the concept of tracing, so they recognize this already. We think that's great, as it will introduce the concept of making to lots of people who might never have considered it.
But what's in this for someone who already has a 3D printer? We can think of one important use: Repairs!
Large, lengthy 3D prints that get broken are a pain. Do you really want to run that 27 hour print again to recover the broken spire on your castle? If not, perhaps you can fix it with your 3Doodler.
Via Kickstarter