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3-D Printing Pen Can Draw In the Air
Several readers sent word of a new addition to the 3-D printing industry. Most 3-D printers are roughly the size of regular printers, and require design files on the computer to guide the extruder. Now there's a much smaller and much simpler alternative: the 3Doodler pen, which lets you draw 3-D objects by hand. The people making the pen set up a Kickstarter project yesterday with a $30,000 goal. They reached that within hours, and now have pledges exceeding $800,000. "The 3Doodler pen is 180mm by 24mm. The pen weighs less than 200 grams or 7 ounces (the weight of a typical apple), although the exact weight will depend on the final shell specifications once in production. And we are using a universal power supply, so provided you have the correct adapter for your country, 3Doodler will work just fine on 110v or 240v. ... While the plastic extruded from 3Doodler is safe to touch once it has left the pen, the pen itself has a metal tip that can get as hot as 270C." The pen uses the same ABS/PLA plastic as most 3-D printers, and they're planning to host stencil designs on their website so that users have patterns to sketch from.
All that for a hot glue gun?
Can we go a week without some new 3d printing story?
While 3-D printing may not be of interest for you, I'm considering buying a 3-D printer, maybe this, maybe next year.
Reason? I'm building RC models. Ships, cars, planes.
Some scale, some just fun models. Point is, you need some small scale lifeboat, landing gear, whatever and can't find it from usual manufacturers?
Simple, now just print it. Sure, it will not be cheap, but that kind of hobby was never cheap anyway.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Surely this goes totally against the main advantage of 3D printing - create a complex shape in CAD and click print - no crafting knowledge/skill necessary! You get accuracy and get to go do other stuff while your creation is being printed.
This just looks like.... hassle.
I agree. Every week Slashdot should randomly pick one topic for which all stories are ignored. No exceptions. This way, everyone who dislikes a particular topic can be satisfied knowing that at some point, for some week, those stories will be ignored because they don't like them.
It won't do a damn bit of good, but what the hey!