I spent 51 hours learning to use a 3D pen. Progress from beginner to 3D pen robot!

about six years ago a new product was invented the 3d pen if you don't know what one is it's basically a hot glue gun but instead of shooting out glue it shoots out plastic so a few months ago i decided i wanted to learn how to use one i filmed the process so you can see all the steps along the way i purchased this pen with my own money because honestly no one's gonna buy it for me this particular brand is called three doodler and the cool thing about them is that they actually invented the technology of 3d pen again about six years ago as you can see i run into a little bit of problem from the very beginning looks like it's just not fitting in it's the hole the wrong size or maybe the adapter's the wrong size oh look there we go i got it what was the trick you got to put it in the right hole and here it is the first line of plastic it's honestly a little hard to control when i press the button on the top of the pen the motor just goes you have to keep moving or else plastic will pile up probably the closest analog is like the idol of a car or maybe a frozen yogurt dispenser and once you press that lever that yogurt is coming out perfect swirl or not here it comes i'm starting with a robot silhouette i'm giving it a face i'm going to peel that silhouette off the paper and then make another one and connect them together ooh that didn't quite work as planned that's the fun of learning something new you make mistakes i'm going to make a second silhouette and try to connect the two together this first project is all about feeling out the medium i have a lot of design experience so what can i borrow from that where am i now and what kind of possibilities does the medium hold these robots definitely don't look nice but it's impossible to overestimate the value of a first step here's a close-up of the pen in action again it's like a hot glue gun plastic goes in plastic comes out but hot the main difference being that a small motor constantly pushes the plastic out now the big question i'm sure you're all asking is can you just take the pen and just draw whatever you want in the air no the answer is no you just can't do that it doesn't work here i am trying to draw a spiral and it just doesn't make a spiral what does work is you can draw straight lines from the air and then wait for them to cool this footage is sped up a bit but with this technique you can get the plastic into three dimensions here i am learning how to make basic shapes most man-made objects are made from squares or cylinders by mastering these basic shapes you can create almost anything that you want in one of my previous videos i worked on improving my car sketching skills it seems obvious but trying to make something is one of the best ways to learn if i only practice simple cubes and shapes i wouldn't push myself and i wouldn't grow so here i am making two side panels we're going to connect those two side panels with a bumper and then we're going to build more connective structures then we're just going to build kind of a skin on top of those structures [Music] i couldn't stop thinking about the mistake from the first robot the robot's eyes and mouth stuck to the paper while the body peeled away i wanted to do something similar kind of like a greeting card where a secret message stayed on the paper until the plastic was peeled away take that right there and pull it this one yep yep what of course for the next build i wanted to revisit the robots this time i wanted to use the kind of wireframe nature of the process to make a three-legged sentry robot this robot could be used to guard important things like frozen yogurt didn't turn out particularly well as it still feels a little rough as the plastic comes in different colors i wanted to try some red and black color combinations i sketched this person they'd be wearing a red robe black spear kind of shield on their back for both this build and the next i was going for a faceted look i wanted the figure to look like was made from the cut faces of a gemstone like it was carved from a crisp russet potato i don't think the final result really matched that expectation but it's not the worst [Music] the figurine was okay but i was determined to make an awesome faceted skull what i was just starting to realize was that 3d pens by nature are fairly imprecise the last poor red skull yorick you deserved better i was also starting to think about how much this plastic was costed me i purchased my 3d pen for about 40 dollars the plastic to make the skull was about two dollars i knew going into it that i was paying a premium for the us designed and quality controlled product and i did expect to pay a little more with the razer razer blade model 3 doodler used however i wanted to experiment with different colors and i knew that if i jumped ship now i could buy an inexpensive chinese white label pen with multiple colors of inexpensive pla sold by the roll so that's what i did the new pen came with a decent but small selection of filament and i decided to test it by making a dinosaur there are a few types of 3d pen plastic i mean this is nerdy stuff but one type is abs which i've been using another type is pla which i'm using here just to be clear the three doodler can use pla or abs but i've been using abs up until this point when i switched over to pla the main benefit of the pla was just that it smelled way better than the abs which you wouldn't think is a big deal until you're spending several hours with the pen just inches from your face the dinosaur is coming together nicely but then i realized i forgot something the arms which is understandable with t-rex the white label chinese pen was obviously quickly designed to reach a low price point with little thought given to ergonomics you can't easily see the tip which is the most important part of the pen the buttons are on the side where they're hard to press however it does take the nice spooled plastic so you don't have to change out the refill so often which is actually my main complaint with the three doodler stix system while easy for first time users is actually more wasteful with each color change and interrupts the creative flow it is however without doubt a better pen which is why i'm still using it in this next build the concept for this base is to have a dark background with white accent panels selectively applied here i am sketching the exterior form i think this is actually what 3d pens excel at rapid ideation of straight lines in space think scaffolding think the eiffel tower think spider webs this is fun stuff and a really good use of the medium what 3d pens are terrible at is covering large distances of plastic with precision human hands are absolutely amazing and have no doubt that with unlimited time and a really engaging true crime podcast you can make a super precise structure but there are inexpensive machines that are much better at it than us look at this actual speed footage i think i spent about six hours making this face and i wasn't really happy with the results the next day i just wanted to use the pen for what it was good for making these quick 3d sketches each medium had strengths and weaknesses if i wanted to create a scale model of a building i'd use foam core or cardboard if i was designing the handle i wanted to test the ergonomics i'd use foam found by 3d printing if i want to make a model of something large that i needed to stand on i may use plywood now if i want to make a quick wire frame model to gauge relative size and that the design has kind of a fasted wireframe element to it i'll use a 3d pen these sketches were fun and really played to the medium strengths i was pretty happy with this next project as i made a breakthrough that really helped my designs previously i had been using the 3d pen in the same way that you might decorate a cake with frosting first i'd make a form that i kind of just stick stuff to the form which worked okay but it made everything a little flat what the hair of this unicorn taught me was i could make a lot of discreet elements and then apply those elements to a form kind of like putting christmas ornaments on a tree by doing this the model feels more textured and real i liked how this project turned out so much that i'll upload a full video to the channel soon i wanted to use the same technique on you guessed it another robot the body was pretty simple just some forms and then wrapping everything like a spider i really wanted the star of the show to be the jet feet [Music] the robot of course can't fly without a red star on its chest i drew the flame sparks flat on a piece of paper and then assembled everything together the flame sparks also formed the support the robot would stand on the smoke was also drawn flat and then assembled to the flames it turned out okay but i don't feel like i learned that much with this project i was mostly just reinforcing the techniques from the unicorn ah the vases i couldn't go down without a fight the last one turned out so poorly by this time i'd learned what the 3d pen was good for i didn't try to make this into a showpiece i didn't put tons of time into it i just made a sketch which is really what the 3d pen just excels at then using the sketch as a model i put it into cad software i then let my robot friend make it for me but that's really not the point of this project so we'll just skip this part [Music] i wanted to do something extravagant for this project again i was still thinking about the idea of making something big out of a lot of small pieces so i designed this skull that would be made of small circles it would have a flower motif kind of day of the dead-esque because i didn't want to do teeth or jaw i decided to give the skull a flower gas mask my wife pointed out that one of the eyes of the skull was way off so i did a little surgery and gave the skull a facelift there we go much better [Music] here i am applying some yellow accents i got really close to finishing the mask when my cheaper 3d pen decided to jam i can't say i was surprised i got what i paid for but it took me about a half hour to figure out where it was jamming and how to fix it once everything was back together just the last few touches and the masks turned out nicely i was just about done with the 3d pen in general but i felt like i hadn't quite made the robot of my dreams so i went all in on this one instead of making my cartoony forms i started with a stick skeleton and then added a bunch of elements onto the skeleton i created fake hydraulics trusses mechanical details armor swords by creating all these layers the robot had a great texture any small imperfections are easy to overlook when there's so much detail the robot of course needed a stand which was pretty simple to make be careful with the torch it turned out well i was pretty proud of this and i'll also upload a full build video to the channel later this robot however did take several hours to build as you can see i spent a lot of hours making things and as you can also see i got better as i went along with more time spent on the later projects as i transitioned from experimenting with the medium to producing more refined objects it took a bit but i've now built a fun new skill if you liked what you saw subscribe i'll be posting a few in-depth follow-up videos focusing on the unicorn and robot builds and would be a shame if someone else saw them before you

Channel: Build-a-Skill

Views: 13,925,429

Keywords: 3DPrinting, 3DPen, DIY

Id: GcONBptTGbk

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019