How Pens Could Bring The Art of 3D Printing to Novice Hands

Move over, backyard toolshed. The must-have fixit tool for the 21st century? Your 3D printer.That's according to 3D printing guru, and high school technology teacher Philip Cotton. Cotton says, if the toolshed of the 20th century was dominated by physical tools like a hammer or a wrench, the 21st century "shed" will be all about designing your own homegrown fixes and hacks—with 3D printing models. “What can you do with a 3D printer?” Cotton asks, answering that the options are “endless.” From home basics like replacing cooking knobs and mending his fence, to shaping original bow-ties for the high school prom, he does it all with his 3D printer. But today's 3D printing designs, which start not in a shed, but on a computer screen, take a lot of technical savvy to produce. To build his 3D models, Cotton and his high-schoolers work in computer-aided design software (CAD) programs--the same brands of systems engineers and architects use to build their professional work. The 3D consumer is often not the maker, instead simply printing out designs conceived by professional designers. Cotton has even started a marketplace where pros can hawk their designs to 3D printers. This week, startup 3D Simo joined a new handheld army of much smaller, more consumer-oriented, do-it-yourself 3D pens. Launching on Kickstarter, they've garnered over $25,000 of their $70,000 production goal in their first four days online, promising hopeful buyers the product will be in their palms by early 2016, for around $79. Their pen can work with 3D plastics, but also wood and metal materials. And while the pen probably won't contribute much to the formal art of 3D design, it does bring the art of designing with 3D materials straight to consumers' hands. Ondrej Virag owns an earlier, bulkier version of Simo's pen. An architect by day, he says he uses the pen for home hobby projects, making delicate art structures like model trees. “When the computer draws a line, it's always straight,” Virag says. He says with something like a small pen, “you can play with the shape, you put the emotion in it.”