3D Drawing Pen- 3Doodler Frustrations

So I received a 3D drawing pen (the 3Doodler more specifically) as a gift for my birthday earlier this month.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make with it off the bat, but I started thinking I could start by making some small plastic glow-in-the-dark earrings for myself! My excitement was high and I read through all the instructions. I plugged the bad boy in, turned the setting to the correct temperature for the type of plastic I was using, and waited the instructed amount of time for the fed-in plastic to heat up.

Don’t know what a 3Doodler is? Check out this video to see a functioning pen in action.

I put the pen down to my work space and pushed the button… and waited… and waited some more. Then, finally, a tiny spider-web-sized thread of melted plastic pushed its way out of the tip of the pen. It was so thin it cooled almost immediately and became unusable. I thought, “Well, I guess I just have to work super fast”.  I continued on and about 15 seconds later, it stopped producing melted plastic at all.

Out came my manual again to read about unclogging.

I followed all the steps, opened it up, removed some mangled plastic, and started the process over again. I heated some new plastic and when I pushed the button, no plastic was extruded. I thought that it might just need more time to heat up than the instructions recommended. I waited longer. When I pushed the button again, a thicker glob came out. I was so excited! It was finally working… or so I thought. A couple seconds later, it turned back into the spider thread and then clogged. I opened it again, removed more weird mangled/deformed plastic, and grumpily tried for round 3.

Third time’s the charm, right? Eeeh… kinda. It worked for about 3 minutes and got clogged again. I ended up just making some lumpy glow-in-the-dark stars to tape onto my wall. haha

I read in some troubleshooting text that the pen might have a temperature adjuster inside of it. I’ll explore that in my next attempt and hopefully that will fix it. I’m determined to make it work! 🙂

If you’re interested in getting a 3Doodler, I would say to be prepared to battle it a bit. Based on some online reviews, it seems like you have a fairly high chance of getting a troublesome pen unit (like I think I did). Fun concept but pretty finicky.