CreoPop SLA 3D Printing Pen

[Brian_Krassenstein]

We will soon have yet another 3D printing pen available. The CreoPop 3D printing pen is different from all the rest. Instead of using FDM technology like the 3Doodler and others, they use SLA technology. This means there is no melting of plastics. Instead they use a UV light to cure a photoresin. The pen will presell on Indiegogo later this month for $89. More details on Creopop can be found here: http://3dprint.com/5295/creopop-sla-3d-printing-pen/. The company will make all sorts of cool resins with varying properties available upon launch. There will be conductive, glow-in-the-dark, magnetic, and other resins for sale.

What do you guys think? Will it be worth the $89? Are these 3D printing pens really worth it? Below is a picture of the pen:

[Feign]

What intrigues me the most is the conductive 'ink' If it's actually an inherently conductive photoresin rather than just a vinyl with conductive filling, then that itself would be a game changer without the pen. Considering the image they have for it, I'm not convinced.

The video for the pen looks like it gets some pretty impressive overhangs, and the resulting 'drawings' look much better than the 3Doodler or the Lix.

Actually, a friend of mine absolutely swears by a photoresin called Bug Bond for gluing his models (it's normally used for gluing fishing lures, hence the name), I've seen him make little clear accents on models with a needle of that and a UV flashlight, so this isn't a new idea, but I have to admit, I never thought to put it together as a 3D printing pen.

[CaptainObvious]

It's a very cool idea, I wonder if the same concept could be used to replace the hotend of a FDM printer?

[Feign]

It would certainly reduce power consumption, not to mention the pen seems to be capable of some pretty extreme overhang without support. (though the 3Doodler and Lix can as well, you have to go VERY slowly with them to do so.)

Now that I think of it though, polyjet style printers effectively use this very process you describe (albeit much more sophisticated). Which means that using this concept in an automated printer may be covered somewhere under Stratasys' mountain of patents.

[AndrasN]

CreoPop is already on indiegogo, collected over $100K still have some early bird offers, the pen + 5 inks just $79! http://igg.me/at/CreoPop

[DrLuigi]

Well 3Doodler is quiet hard to get a decent overhang,

This is better as a pen goes, but imo this is kinda useless, You can't realy make anything with these pens,

Just get a 3D printer and let it make it for you instead of making it yourself that is like nowhere near the quality and measurements. :P

I still wonder why he said about getting plastic in your eye, even hot plastic i thought he said, How the hell do you get that in your eye xD
Well kids might play with it, but thats quiet hard to do :P

[Brian_Krassenstein]

CreoPop, the makers of a novel 3D printing pen which doesn't use heat to create its magic, have just scored nearly a million dollars in additional financing to continue the development and marketing of their product. The financing, from venture capitalists 500 Startups!, Ruvento and a list of private investors, is in addition to the $185,000 the company raised via an Indiegogo campaign last year. You can read the whole story here: http://3dprint.com/39981/creopop-financing-sxsw-awards/

[LambdaFF]

Is the price of the consumables known ? With resin, it might be quite high.

Also, yes a hot end is hot, but drinking liquid resin is quite harmful too ! :-)

[Feign]

Well, it's been a while, I've been messing around with some MakerJuice G+, a UV laser, and a rather large number of lab pipettes with some pretty fun results (oh, and red safety glasses, can't forget those!), a little like TIG welding with plastic and without having to cover up to keep from getting burned. It's definitely no substitute for this pen though. And I don't think bog standard SLA printer resin will do for ink in it either. Most likely the ink used in the CreoPop is evenly partially cured to a gel consistency so that it stays in place better while curing.

If this pen (and the Kickstarter copycat, the Polyes Q1) make it big, there's a real possibility that third party resin makers will start offering photoresin gels in their lineup, bringing the price down.

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Andreas Birnik, the CEO and co-founder of CreoPop, says his company's 3D printing pen takes a different approach than typical 3D pens. Instead of melting plastic with a hot end extruder like those used in FDM 3D printers and most other 3D printing pens, the CreoPop uses a version of stereolithography and a photosensitive resin cured by a UV laser. According to Birnik, he and co-founder Dmitry Starodubstev have now raised more than SGD 2 million in seed funding. Birnik also says the core technology of the CreoPop pen will ultimately be used for a variety of 3D printing applications for the consumer and industrial markets. You can read the whole story here: http://3dprint.com/70200/creopop-sec...d-of-financing
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...pen-in-use.jpg