3D is for Pen

Ten years ago I was chatting with a German toy collector as we walked into town for a meal one evening, turning from toys, to talk of non-toy stuff - as you do - we got to discussing the then newsworthiness of the Too Much Stuff hypothesis, which had recently been proposed by some talking-head at the UN, EU, Times or somewhere equally worthy.

During which discussion we both agreed that we too; had too much stuff, and mishearing his pronunciation of a well known German discount store, I was eager to agree with him about the cheap but efficient (usually German) power tools I had been buying, we then enthusiastically regaled each-other with our tales of mini-drill purchase, big-drills, drill-stands, powered-drivers, garden tools, paint-strippers and etcetera, only to realise we were both talking of our identical trips to collect either the Lidl 'forthcoming items' catalogue, or stuff from it!

Being a faithless whore, I also patronise Aldi, but I prefer Lidl! And it was to Lidl I repaired a week ago to grab this little gadget . . .

. . . advertised in the previous week's flyer, I wonder if my German colleague also trotted-down to his 'local' for a 'fix'? And - yes; I also got four packs of stollen-bites!

Having seen similar things in News, Views Etc . . . the other day, only slightly cheaper and aimed at kids, you may understand why I chose to invest in something a couple of quid more expensive but aimed at adults . . . I needn't have bothered, and if you are thinking of a 3D pen, my advice is try the cheapest kid's one you can find - as a sort of 'tech-primer'.

This is the object of my attention, and there were only five left by 3pm on issue-day, you have to be quick with Lidl's offers, or stay at home! But you usually only have to wait about six-months for it to reappear and it's often less-subscribed on the subsequent releases.

Although sold by Lidl it is in fact a Karsten product and the support sites are Karsten's not Lidl's. The first thing I can tell you is that so far I have been unable to reproduce anything remotely resembling the blue pyramid on the cover.

"Ergonomically designed" it definitely is, a 3D printer it definitely 'aint! What this is; is exactly what it looks like - a reduced-scale hot glue-gun! The fact that you load it with a rigid, continuous, polymer filament rather than soft, rubbery, synthetic wax-based sticks is the only difference and that's one of detail, not technology.

There is a second difference which is technological, the feed is automatic rather than trigger- or thumb-based, but you still have to operate a button to activate the feed - so for all practicable purposes is it a glue-gun . . . with a fine nozzle.

You get three 10m x 0.6mm filaments (an 'industry standard' size - there's a few of these pen-designs around now) of Poly-lactic acid polymer (PLA); a relatively new plastic which is certified 100% bio-degradable and even compostable - so don't make anything with it you might be planning on leaving to your children! You can however get ABS (Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) filaments which will last in the environment for thousands of years, so an ethical choice there?!

I found the filament feed to be problematic from the off; the instructions are adamant that you mustn't force it (manually push it in or pull it out), but leave the auto-feed to do it . . . from brand-new it failed to successfully achieve both, several times within a half hour or so (and needed manual 'help'). It's also important to cut the filament flat (at 90° to the cable length) in order for it to feed correctly.

Also like a glue-gun the nozzle cools with use and the thing stops occasionally to get a mental grip on itself, and if it gets too hot (cooks-off) it starts spitting and leaving bubbles in the substrate. To alleviate the later, it switches-off automatically if you don't use it for two minutes, and like a glue-gun you will need a bit of scrap for over-dribble, for cleaning the nozzle, for colour-changes, flushing &etc..

Once it has stopped it takes up to 80 second to reheat before you are green-lighted to go again, while stopping the feed doesn't stop stuff oozing out, ruining your work if you're not careful. The fact that the 'off-button' and the reverse-feed button are one and the same is also bloody annoying.

The pen is described as a '3D' (for three-dimensional) pen with a 'print-head', but as you can see from my introductory efforts; it is neither a pen nor a printer; what this is, is a deposition modeller, or material-deposition device and nothing else. A glorified, hot, icing-piper - splodging stuff roughly where you want it - indeed; a practised pastry-chef might well get better results than the average user and would certainly get better results than me!

It oozes, briefly molten plastic under relatively low pressure (in comparison with injection-moulding pressures), with little accurate control, in order to make novelties - which you will see from the Faceplant page and linked Youtube videos - are variations of the things previous generations have made from raffia, matchsticks, beads, empty lavatory-rolls, tooth-picks, straws, cotton-reels, tissue paper, scissors & glue et al.

The reason I am being so negative about this pen is that I don't want people being too disappointed by it; or one of the similar animals out there prowling for a bite of your 'hard earned' shekels.

I thought it might be useful for converting figures or filling gaps in models, but the plastic is pretty unworkable once set - having the properties of nylon or polypropylene, or indeed its stable-mate filament; ABS, the polymer of choice for electric kettle manufacture, vehicle interiors and engine-bay-furniture type stuff!

It cools too quickly to join cut-n-shut figures, and while it would fill gaps, trimming would be laborious and it may not take or hold model paints (older spirit enamels or newer aqueous and PVA types) well? I haven't tried painting my efforts yet, but I suspect paint would easily scrape of small pieces, or flake from larger constructions.

In the upper image you can see my attempt at the lower image; my initials/moniker! And when I tried to remove the diagonal between the two uprights of the 'H' [using the new, sharp enough for bone, blade I had replaced in my Swan Morton No.3 handle, after the 'proper' glue-gun glue removal exercise and steel-fracture, suffered working on the lip-balm bear project the other day (keep up!)] it all fell to pieces, because if you don’t stab the joints into each other, they don't actually stick together as one bead of substrate has cooled too much and the other is cooling as soon as it leaves the pen.

This means that even if you use one of the templates provided to make, say; the butterfly, it will be shedding bits about the house for ever after, especially as it's bio-degradable and will only ever become less stable!

It will be useful for building up scenery (but that will prove costly in filament), likewise it may have applications working with wire-armatures, or using its own crude armatures* and I'm sure if I get a brown and green filament I will produce passable trees, but it's all a bit of a faff for a simple thing dressed-up as future-tech-today. And the trees would be passable with Lego, not as war-games terrain, they would still need paint and flocking.

* There are more expensive, more pen-like models out there (like the original TV-advertised one a few years ago) and they may be better suited to producing uprights or horizontals, but I tried, at all three feed-speeds and various human-arm speeds, and couldn't produce a measured upright of constant thickness to the point I wished it to finish, thin filaments of 'stretched-sprue' being the result of attempting a sudden, pull-away finish, with lumpy, collapsing stumps being the result of attempting to halt at the desired point.

While all horizontals sag unless they are held-up until they cool, something which requires a third hand while the nozzle dribbles, forgotten, out of the corner of the mind's eye!

Where it may have some use, is in restoration/mending of old hollow-casts? He adds after reading Scott's article on Mexicans the other day, getting heads back on, or fixing arms, the ooze being more easily cut, filed-away and/or sanded from a metal substrate . . . worth a try! But I don't think you could use it to say - rebuild horses legs?

Links

The above-shown YouTube video

Their Faceplant page

There are other videos you can navigate too from the above and in one of them someone builds a box (with a different brand of pen) but you can detect the editor's film-cuts at the end of each stroke, so you are never shown the full process.

I will persevere with practising and report back again and if anyone else has experience of these types of 'tools', I know lots of people are interested in the practicalities, and applications. It may be useful for hidden mends in restoration for instance; pink filament might have an application in the restorative surgery of Action Man or Barbie joints?

Get the dark-green filament and you could have a decent stab at making The Creature from the Black-Lagoon, brown - a Bigfoot, white - a Yeti! Or orange for a REAL swamp-monster, but there's no way you can accurately model that hairpiece with this pen!

But - seriously; it's a lot of faff for something you may get out once in a blue moon? Like a lot of the tools I've bought from Lidl over the years! Digital micrometer, soldering iron, wheeled car jack, jack stands, watchmaker's screwdrivers . . . all useful stuff . . . occasionally!