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The 3Doodler - Drawing in the air

The 3Doodler is a fun gadget. Below are my experiences kickstarting, using, and unjamming the pen.

Kickstarter

I'm a gadget man. I love interesting often seemingly pointless devices and I own many of them. Kickstarter is a dream come true for someone like me, a portal into the mind of the inventor. For some time I had been wanting to buy myself a 3D printer, however the costs involved while falling steadily are prohibitive. They're very expensive let's leave it at that. However, on Kickstarter there are a few promising "budget" printers, and it's often very tempting to get involved and back them. This is where I stumbled upon the 3Doodler (Kickstarter page), a "pen" which you can use to create simple & fun 3D printed models. I backed them immediately opting for a pledge that would get me one of their production ready models as quickly as possible.

The wait

Now, I don't have a great amount of experience with Kickstarter but I had heard many a horror story from users that didn't get their product or "reward" for backing on time, even that it wasn't what they wanted or expected. However my experience with the 3Doodling guys was reasonably positive. I had received lots of updates on progress of the project and I was sure that when the promised time rolled around they would deliver. November came... and went. With Christmas coming up I was getting increasingly impatient. On the 6th of December a friend of mine sent me a message.

"My 3Doodler arrived!"

But for me, still no 3Doodler. The weekend rolled by and lo and behold a package was at my door (or more accurately it had been picked up in the office mail and I had to go and find it).

No slight to the guys who created it. I was being highly impatient.

So first things first. How do you say it?

"Three doodler."

Maybe? How i've been saying it for some reason.

"Three-dee doodler."

As my brother said the first time he looked at the packaging. It's not a good name.

My brother is an architect (in some lengthy training). Needless to say, the prospect of a pen you could use to annotate or decorate models in a new and interesting way appealed to him immensly.

It took me a few days, but I found some time to really dedicate to this new gadget of mine. I began just by doodling. I wanted to know how to operate the pen, so I drew a few strange spring-like blobs and began to realise that it's not as simple as it first appears!

Using the 3Doodler

A few things to note:

  1. Draw onto a surface. Drawing on the air is all well and good, however it's not easy and certainly not precise. Use paper or card, at least until you've had some practice.

  2. Leave the strange silicon looking cap on! The first time I used it I took it off thinking it would melt or something similar. It doesn't. If you take it off, when you're passing over already "printed" plastic, they can often get stuck to the metal of the nozzle ruining what you've already lain down.

  3. Cut already used plastic cleanly. I'll come back to this. If you feed plastic into the pen that's a little melty or not cut straight at the ends. It jams.

  4. Do not turn the pen off with plastic inside. You'll risk a jam. Un-jamming is a pain. Don't do it.

After messing around and the most impressive thing created was a small J I decided to try and reverse the plastic to get a feel for how it worked. It reversed fine, predicably there was a "melty end" where it when down to a point rather than being a flat edge. This provided me with a bit of a puzzle. Refeeding the plastic, did i use this end, or turn it around and use the flat edge. I resolved to use the flat edge, just in case it didn't feed properly.

Neither of these were the correct option. Remember Note 3 cut off the melty end. It may seem like a waste but if you want to actually use your 3Doodler. Do it!

On refeeding (incorrectly) I thought I would try something fun. I'm working with the guys over at Ghost so I thought "I know what's next!"

Ghost

You can see a little terrible attempt that looks more like a Pacman in the background. Messing around and creating this little ghost used up the remaining ABS plastic in the pen. It was time to refill again.

Jammed

Here is where the real trouble started. I couldn't feed any more strands of plastic. I assume the issue, was that the sides of the plastic didn't touch the gearing within the pen and it wouldn't feed. After 30 minutes since opening. The thing was broken.

Brilliant.

Looking on the FAQs section of the 3Doodler website, they have a section on jams and blockages. Their points while useful for less serious problems aren't when the pen has something stuck on the inside. Also, they fail to mention how surprising it is when you remove the nozzle and put a flame to it and the ABS plastic you're trying to clear catches fire... I suppose I should have been expecting it.

I resolved to contact 3Doodler themselves. First by Twitter, and then by email. You can see the tweet I sent below.

Not the most descriptive tweet. But companies these days are pretty hot on responding to user issues via twitter. I got a response that same day. Although, not an overly useful one.

I decided to remind them I was still out there waiting.

Still, no response. Not great service guys!

The fix

Lots happened that week that I wont get into here. The 3Doodler breaking was the icing on the cake to a terrible few days. It was a few days before I attempted to fix it again.

Anyone who has issues with the 3Doodler jamming and they worry it's broken for good should try these simple steps.

Disclaimer: If you burn or electricute yourself here. It's not my fault. You do this at your own risk.

  1. As their FAQ states, remove the nozzle with plyers or a wrench. Clear it out by whatever means you like. I put if over the stove. Easier than trying to hold a match or lighter without burning yourself! Note: if you heat the plastic directly. It will catch alight!

  2. Plug in the 3Doodler and wait for it to warm up. Then wait a bit longer.

  3. Get yourself some long tweezers and attempt to remove as much of the plastic as possible from the end. Chances are you wont get all of it.

  4. This is where I got stuck for quite a while attempting to poke the plastic back up the inside of the pen, or tease it out using a steel pin. The easiest way, is the most obvious way. Feed in some new plastic (that you don't mind ruining). This plastic still wont feed, however it should bunch up all the blocked slightly melted plastic nearer the end of the nozzle and finally make it possible to remove! Once you have, the new plastic should feed entirely through the pen (don't pull on it or it will distend and probably get stuck again).

Needless to say I was happy about this! I decided to update 3Doodler via Twitter on my success.

Perhaps I was expecting too much. But, I was a expecting a little more than simply favouriting the tweet.

3Doodler favourited my complaint

Not sure what that says there, it was a win for me. However, all the problems that I encountered weren't really a win for the product.

Final thoughts

I'm looking forward to getting back into more doodling! It's a fun little gadget, now I know a little bit more about its inner workings. I am not so worried about breaking the thing!

I got a message from my brother after letting him know it was fixed.

"Can't wait to play with this. Please do not break it again!"

So it's definitely an appreciated gadget!

Oh, and I still haven't had a response to my support email.

Update: 16/12/2013 21:13

I've got a response to my support email this evening. Some interesting points;

When you take the nozzle off of the pen tip, is there plastic visible coming out of the pen? If so, I find that sometimes I am able to clear jams by putting a piece of non-extruded plastic up against that and "pulling" the plastic through the pen while extruding.

Now I didn't try this because I for some reason didn't think that the hole at this end was big enough for a non-melted strand to go through. However it doesn't seem like a bad idea. They also said;

Some of these early jams are just caused by factory dust getting into the pen.

If the above is true that will be great, it means that I wont have to worry about the thing packing up on me in the future!

I have been thinking since writing this post earlier today. It would be great if with the pen you received some kind of “blank” strand made of some form of metal or silicone that can withstand the temperature of the heating chamber. That way someone could run it through when there’s a jam and clear any blockages without having to waste a perfectly good strand of plastic.