Now I’ve seen it all. Who would have thought about using a pen as a 3D printer to develop 3 dimensional objects? Or, for the engineer, taking drawing on a napkin into the world of 3 dimensions. Apparently, Peter Dilworth, Co-Founder and CEO of WobbleWorks has. This company has already achieved it’s Kickstarter funding goal, and plans to start shipping pens in a few months. This is a fascinating idea.
You can use this pen, called the 3Doodler, to draw in the air. Using ABS plastic, the 3Doodler draws in the air or on surfaces. No software or computers are needed to create simple three-dimensional objects. According to WobbleWorks, you just plug the pen into a power socket and start drawing anything within minutes.
As this pen draws, it extrudes heated plastic, which quickly cools and solidifies into a strong stable structure. Thus, you can build an infinite variety of shapes and items.
The 3Doodler pen is 180 mm by 24 mm and weighs less than 200 grams (7 ounces), although the exact weight will depend on the final shell specifications once in production. It uses a universal power supply, so provided you have the correct adapter for your country, it will work on 110 Vor 240 V.
It uses 3 mm ABS or PLA plastic as its “ink” – just like a 3D printer. Each 3Doodler backed on Kickstarter comes with at least one bag of plastic; each bag will contain ten 1 ft strands of plastic; and each 1 ft strand produces approximately 11 ft of 3Doodling fun… yes, you read that right, a foot of plastic goes a very long way in the 3Doodler. Here’s the video.