The 3D pen offers an interesting take on ‘3D printing’ in that you form part of the ‘printer’ by guiding the nozzle.
This 3D pen set comes with the pen, the power supply, some instructions and some sample plastics used by the pen. There were 3 different colours included and replacements are easily available from Amazon.
The pen is comfortable to hold and has buttons to control the plastic wire feeding motor within comfortable reach. The thin plastic ‘wire’ is fed into the top of the pen and once in place a press of a button draws the plastic in where it’s melted and pushed out of the pen tip.
During the process the pen stays comfortably cool, it’s just the pen tip you need to be vary careful with. The instructions list this as suitable for use by children from 8 upwards, but it does seem like something you’ll want to supervise given the heated nib.
The heated plastic cools really quickly, there is little danger of it burning you once it’s away from the nib. What you do with the plastic is the interesting part, you can try and ‘draw’ in the air, draw plastic objects on templates and stick them to each other or use paper as a structure to draw around.
Once you’ve finished you remove any remaining wire by pressing the back button. On the pen tested this seemed a little temperamental, but once it started reversing the plastic quickly came free for use at a later date.
Available now from Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/1zRdHRA and Amazon com: https://amzn.to/1byGXqV
