The 3Doodler is a 3D pen developed by Peter Dilworth, Maxwell Bogue, and Daniel Cowen of WobbleWorks, Inc. (formerly WobbleWorks LLC). The 3Doodler works by extruding heated plastic that cools almost instantly into a solid, stable structure, allowing for the free-hand creation of three-dimensional objects. It utilizes plastic thread made of either acrylonitrile butadiene styrene ("ABS"), polylactic acid ("PLA"), or "FLEXY", thermal polyurethane ("TPU") that is melted and then cooled through a patented process while moving through the pen, which can then be used to make 3D objects by hand. [1] The 3Doodler has been described as a glue gun for 3D printing because of how the plastic is extruded from the tip, with one foot of the plastic thread equaling "about 11 feet of extruded material". [2]
There are three pen models, Start, Create and Pro, intended for children, general consumers, and professionals respectively. [3]
The inventors of the 3Doodler, Maxwell Bogue and Peter Dilworth, built the first 3Doodler prototype in early 2012 at the Artisan's Asylum [4] in Somerville, Massachusetts. After waiting fourteen hours for a 3D print session to complete, they discovered that the printer had missed a line, leading them to decide to create the manual pen. [5] [6]
WobbleWorks launched a Kickstarter campaign for the 3Doodler on February 19, 2013, with an initial fundraising target of $30,000. The campaign closed on March 25, 2013. The $50 reward level was the minimum needed to receive the product, with highly recommended reward levels of $75 and $99 including more bags of plastic thread, and the highest level of $10,000 including a "membership in the company’s beta testing program for future products" and the opportunity to spend an entire day with the company's founders, along with the backer's 3Doodler being personally engraved. The reward levels were expanded due to demand, with the added tiers of the product shipping in 2014 rather than in 2013 for the earlier backers. The company also teamed up with several Etsy wire artists to showcase the abilities of the 3Doodler and to create "limited edition art pieces" for the campaign. [7] [8]
The fundraising target was reached within hours, and many of the reward levels were sold out within the first day, along with all the Etsy art pieces. [7] By February 22, more than $1 million had been pledged, [9] [10] and the final pledge amount exceeded $2 million.
3Doodler Start is a version of the 3Doodler especially designed for little children. The developer states that it is kid-safe because the tip of the pen does not heat up. Instead of plugging it into a power outlet like other 3Doodlers, one can charge it and press the on button to use the pen.
In January 2015, an improved version of the 3Doodler was introduced, and a second fundraising campaign on Kickstarter yielded more than $1.5 million. [11] Updates include an option for changing the size and shape of the tip, a smaller design, and a quieter fan. [12]
3Doodler EDU sets are designed to be used in schools by educators and students. [13] The target age group for 3Doodler EDU is from K-12 to University. The pens can be used to add an element of creativity and arts into STEM/STEAM education. [14] 3Doodler EDU has been certified for pedagogical quality by Education Alliance Finland.
The original Kickstarter community has spawned a broader community of people who share their creations online. [15]
In February 2017, Polaroid B.V. released a 3D pen to compete with the 3Doodler brand. The Polaroid Play pen allows users to make creations in a 3-dimensional form. It uses filament made from PLA plastic.
Other makers include MYNT3D, TecBoss, CreoPop, Simo, Scribbler, AIO Robotics, PACKGOUT, BeTim, and Polaroid B.V. [12]
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) (chemical formula (C8H8)x·(C4H6)y·(C3H3N)z ) is a common thermoplastic polymer. Its glass transition temperature is approximately 105 °C (221 °F). ABS is amorphous and therefore has no true melting point.
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control, with the material being added together, typically layer by layer.
RepRap is a project to develop low-cost 3D printers that can print most of their own components. As open designs, all of the designs produced by the project are released under a free software license, the GNU General Public License.
Digital modeling and fabrication is a design and production process that combines 3D modeling or computing-aided design (CAD) with additive and subtractive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is also known as 3D printing, while subtractive manufacturing may also be referred to as machining, and many other technologies can be exploited to physically produce the designed objects.
MakerBot Industries, LLC was an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Project. It was acquired by Stratasys in June 2013. As of April 2016, MakerBot had sold over 100,000 desktop 3D printers worldwide. Between 2009 and 2019, the company released 7 generations of 3D printers, ending with the METHOD and METHOD X. It was at one point the leader of the desktop market with an important presence in the media, but its market share declined over the late 2010s. MakerBot also founded and operated Thingiverse, the largest online 3D printing community and file repository. In August 2022, the company completed a merger with its long-time competitor Ultimaker. The combined company is known as UltiMaker, but retains the MakerBot name for its Sketch line of education-focused 3D printers.
Kickstarter, PBC is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of February 2023, Kickstarter has received US$7 billion in pledges from 21.7 million backers to fund 233,626 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.
Printrbot is a 3D printer company created by Brook Drumm in 2011 and originally funded through Kickstarter. Printrbot printers use fused deposition modelling to manufacture 3-dimensional artifacts.
To Be or Not to Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, also referred to as To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure, is a 2013 novel by Ryan North, retelling the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet in a choose your own adventure format and mostly contemporary language. The initial run of the book was crowd funded through Kickstarter and published by charitable "uncorporation" Breadpig. It was eventually followed by two sequels, also by North, Romeo and/or Juliet and William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark and/or Other Stories.
Hyrel 3D is a company which manufactures 3D Printers for home, office and industrial settings, and is based in Atlanta, GA. Hyrel 3D makes modular manufacturing machines that are capable of additive and subtractive processes, including fused deposition modeling. These systems use interchangeable heads that are used to create three-dimensional solid or hollow objects from a digital model, which can be designed or produced from a scan.
ROBO 3D was an American 3D printer manufacturer located in San Diego, California and traded in Australian Securities Exchange under symbol ASX: RBO.
A recyclebot is an open-source hardware device for converting waste plastic into filament for open-source 3D printers like the RepRap. Making DIY 3D printer filament at home is both less costly and better for the environment than purchasing conventional 3D printer filament. In following the RepRap tradition there are recyclebot designs that use mostly 3-D printable parts.
M3D, LLC is an American manufacturer of 3D printers in Fulton, Maryland. The company's flagship product is the "Micro 3D" or "Micro".
Zortrax is a Polish manufacturer of 3D printers and filaments for SMB market and rapid prototyping for industries, including robotics and automation, architecture, industrial design, engineering, aviation, industrial automation. Zortrax machines work with dedicated software, firmware and filaments.
Fused filament fabrication (FFF), also known as fused deposition modeling, or filament freeform fabrication, is a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material. Filament is fed from a large spool through a moving, heated printer extruder head, and is deposited on the growing work. The print head is moved under computer control to define the printed shape. Usually the head moves in two dimensions to deposit one horizontal plane, or layer, at a time; the work or the print head is then moved vertically by a small amount to begin a new layer. The speed of the extruder head may also be controlled to stop and start deposition and form an interrupted plane without stringing or dribbling between sections. "Fused filament fabrication" was coined by the members of the RepRap project to give an acronym (FFF) that would be legally unconstrained in its use.
Aleph Objects, Inc. was a small manufacturing company based in Loveland, Colorado. Their business model focused around the development of Open-source hardware for 3D printing with full support for Free and open-source software.
The Prusa i3 is a family of fused deposition modeling 3D printers, manufactured by Czech company Prusa Research under the trademarked name Original Prusa i3. Part of the RepRap project, Prusa i3 printers were called the most used 3D printer in the world in 2016. The first Prusa i3 was designed by Josef Průša in 2012, and was released as a commercial kit product in 2015. The latest model is available in both kit and factory assembled versions. The Prusa i3's comparable low cost and ease of construction and modification made it popular in education and with hobbyists and professionals, with the Prusa i3 model MK2 printer receiving several awards in 2016.
In recent years, 3D printing has developed significantly and can now perform crucial roles in many applications, with the most common applications being manufacturing, medicine, architecture, custom art and design, and can vary from fully functional to purely aesthetic applications.
A variety of processes, equipment, and materials are used in the production of a three-dimensional object via additive manufacturing. 3D printing is also known as additive manufacturing, because the numerous available 3D printing process tend to be additive in nature, with a few key differences in the technologies and the materials used in this process.
3D printing filament is the thermoplastic feedstock for fused deposition modeling 3D printers. There are many types of filament available with different properties.
Material extrusion-based additive manufacturing (EAM) represents one of the seven categories of 3d printing processes, defined by the ISO international standard 17296-2. While it is mostly used for plastics, under the name of FDM or FFF, it can also be used for metals and ceramics. In this AM process category, the feedstock materials are mixtures of a polymeric binder and a fine grain solid powder of metal or ceramic materials. Similar type of feedstock is also used in the Metal Injection Molding (MIM) and in the Ceramic Injection Molding (CIM) processes. The extruder pushes the material towards a heated nozzle thanks to