Hi Guys! This is Cindy Lietz, your Polymer
Clay Tutor in today's PcT Product Demos. I'm
going to be demonstrating a 3D printing pen
by Banggood.com. Now, they contacted me a
little bit ago, they've seen our videos on
YouTube and asked me if I wanted to demo the
3D Printing Pen. At first, I thought I'd love
to, except for it really has nothing to do
with polymer clay. Then I started looking
around and I saw some people doing some jewelry
and different displays and stuff. Then I though
OK, I'll do that. But then Doug was talking
to me and he had seen on YouTube a polymer
clay miniaturist by the name of Angie Scarr,
she's from the UK and she does really great
polymer clay miniature things for doll houses
and stuff. Anyway, she was using a 3D Printing
Pen to make all kinds of neat things. So,
you'll want to check her out for sure but
I want to show you some of the things I decided
to do with this pen myself. Alright, here
is the pen here. It's funny because on the
box here, it says 3D Stereo Graffiti Pen,
I'm guessing the stereo is a translation error
but it's funny. It's a cool pen here, I'll
show you the box itself and some of the features
of it. It has a LED screen or OLE screen,
I'm not sure what that means but anyways,
it's a little screen that you can read from.
It's nice and light, it tells you about how
to switch from ABS plastic to PLA plastic,
which I'll talk about in a second. It has
high quality buttons which it does and then
it has a nice shape. It also comes in a bunch
of colors. They sent me the red one. If I
had a choice, I'd probably would have taken
the metallic purple one 'cause then, it would
go with some of the things in my studio. Here
are the other things to do with the pen itself.
It's got its power input, types of plastic
filament used which is PLA and ABS. It talks
about the temperature ranges, you need different
temperatures for the two types of plastic
and this does the both of them. It uses 1.75mm
filament, the same steps that you'd use in
a 3D printing machine and then the nozzle
diameter is 0.7mm so it's quite small. I found
it's quite an interesting thing to work with.
I'll show some of my samples and things in
a second but the product itself is pretty
simple. You have a plug in cord, and then
you got a little pen. This pen, I expected
it to feel lower quality and it feels really
nice quality actually. The plastic is really
nice. It feels it's got a neat finish to it.
It's got a nice weight--it's nice and light.
The buttons are--they click like they said,
they're high quality and they are. Like I
found, when I used it, it had no issues, it
worked really well, there was no jamming,
all that kind of thing. I'll show you that
works in one second. It also comes with a
little bit of PLA plastic filament. The company
also sent me a bag of ABS plastic and these
are the rolls that it came in. It's not very
expensive, it's the same kind of stuff like
I said for the 3D printing machines, so they
probably just taking it off really large spools
but there's eight colors in this bag and it
was only around 14 CAD so it's not expensive
at all. I did use a lot of the yellow because
it really wasn't my favorite color and I thought
I'd practice with that but there's lots of
colors available out there. I'm gonna start
with a piece of the blue stuff here I cut
off already so I'll just use that. The cord
itself is a little too short in my opinion,
it's kind of a pain, you need to use an extension
cord or something because it's quite short
but it all seems to work quite well. Also,
in these pens, there isn't an on and off switch
so it just automatically turns on as soon
as you put the plugin in which is at the back
here. Hopefully, Doug will be able to see
but there's a little screen here. Can you
see that Doug? OK, good. Alright, so, there's
a little screen at the front here and on the
top side or on the right hand side of the
thing here, there's buttons that have arrows
going both directions and that's for changing
the speed up and down but also, if you push
them both at the same time, it switches between
PLA plastic and ABS plastic. That was really
unclear. I couldn't really find that in the
instructions anywhere but then later, I did
read it on the outside of the box so that's
probably an issue for people. It didn't make
sense in the instructions. Once you switch
to the right plastic, I'm gonna use the ABS
plastic and I've got it set on that. It's
gonna go to 231 degrees Celsius and to get
it to start heating up, you just press the
forward button. So you just press the forward
button there and you can see. The temperature
gauge starts going up, really quite quickly,
it starts jumping up. As soon as it gets to
the 231, or the 230 range then you can start
feeding your plastic in. So you can see it's
just jumping up really quick. One thing to
remember, don't leave it plugged in. As soon
as you're done doing something, unplug it
'cause it heats up so fast, it's not an issue
there but you don't want the plastics melting
inside in the back. It's a little bit like
working with a glue gun actually and you don't
just leave your glue gun plugged in. OK, so
it's up to temperature and I'm gonna put the
filament in the back. You can put the whole
roll on, I'm just gonna put a small amount
then you're gonna press the forward button
and you can hear it. It starts feeding forward
so now it's grabbed on and it's ready to go.
Now, the funny thing about this is that it
has quite a learning curve to it. I handed
it to my husband Doug and he said "oh I don't
know why it's so hard" but it's sort of like
a crayon. A crayon is not hard to use but
it's hard to make something really great with
it. So it takes some time to practice with
it and you can see that it's edging out a
little bit as we go. I can change the speed
with this top one. It's on the Speed 2, I
can change it to 3, 4, 5, 6, between 1 and
6 so it comes out really fast. I'm gonna press
the down button, it's coming out grey right
now because I have a clear, black and red
in there before. If I just press it down,
it just starts coming out. I can slow it down,
and go different speeds. It has quite a bit
of practice to get it smooth, it's kind of
like drawing with a glue gun like I said.
You can do some 3D stuff like up into the
air but it's tricky. It kinda falls over,
it hardens as it cools so it's coming out
soft but then to keep it straight, you have
to let it cool and let it stiffen and then
pull away from it. It takes quite a bit, it's
not easy as the videos you'll see out there.
To draw on flat surfaces, you can have little
drawings down here, some little shape here
of a feather and I did quite a few little
feathers when I was practicing so you can
just draw around your design and one of the
things that Angie Scarr does is she makes
these wonderful wrought iron, miniature wrought
iron fences and stuff 'cause this looks like
wrought iron if you use the black and she
did some really neat stuff so you might wanna
check that out. It comes out kinda blobby
and if you try to draw on the surface like
my glass table for example, it won't grab
on to it so it just kinda falls all off so
you can't really draw on a glass surface or
anything. You need to draw on something like
paper and then you can just build with it.
I'll just continue to draw like that. See
how the color's shifting? That's because I
had cut a bunch of short pieces and just changed
them and so it's gonna shift. I was playing
around the idea of having it shift from color
to color. I forgot that was in there, actually.
Now it's shifting over to the blue that I
put in there last. It gets these little threads
on it like a glue gun, you can cut those off
or you can use a heat gun and just melt those
back but it will just prop off your paper
like that. So there's lots of neat things
you can do with it because--here, I'm gonna
unplug it. There's two types of plastic, the
PLA and then the ABS. The ABS plastic melts
at a slightly higher temperature. I'm trying
to remember the amount--the ABS melts between
200 degrees Celsius and 230 Celsius and then
the PLA is at a lower temperature but the
ABS plastic melts at a higher temperature
than what we bake polymer clay at . That's
what Angie also figured out--that you can
combine the two so you can build something
first with the ABS plastic and then add liquid
clay or baked clay to it. I have a whole bunch
of things that I made, most of them are pretty
terrible-looking because like I said, there's
quite a lot of learning curve to it. I tried
to make some three dimensional beads, they're
kind of awful, they're kind of cool, I can't
quite decide but to me, they seem to have
potential. So if I'm to wok on it, I may be
able to come up with the design that looks
neat. Right now, it's still a work in progress
and I really don't like how they turned out
but I'm excited about its potential. Now,
I did a whole bunch of this kind of feather
shapes just trying to get used to using the
gun and tracing them out. I think that you
could do some really neat things with them,
you can kind of hang them on to a chain here.
I think there's a lot of findings, a lot of
beads, earrings, all kinds of neat things
that you could do with these, they're really
really light and the structure is neat. I
experimented with some liquid clay. I made
two different examples here using the leaves.
This one I used some Sculpey TLS and just
sort of poured it in to the top after I made
it, I poured into the top and I rubbed it
with a little bit of PearlEx powder just to
give it the sheen and then I baked it and
it did just fine in the oven. This one, I
put some resin into it and put some PearlEx
powder on it and I think this one looked really
quite neat. I also wanted to try it with solid
clay. I had this idea though I haven't flushed
it out yet, it hasn't worked yet totally.
I just wanted to show it to you anyways. I
had this idea of making some sort of cages
that I can make large, hollow beads on and
so I practiced making different ones and it
was hard to get it, to control it but I made
a couple of forms here. Like I said, they're
still--I'm in the discovery phase but I'm
excited about the potential. OK, so I made
a little cube, a wonky one out of some black
clay and I covered it with a really thin sheet
of white translucent clay so. A sheet is only
a playing card and a half thick, I wrapped
it around my little form and baked it. The
plastic held up, no problem, so I think there's
some very cool art potential with this technique.
This isn't there yet but it's got the potential.
This is a little triangle, pyramid type shape
I made similar to this one actually, only
slightly better. So I think it--like I said,
it's got some potential to combine the two
Angie also made some really neat stained glass
windows using liquid polymer clay and little
forms similar to this little black gate I
tried to make. Lastly, I just wanted to show
you a little pair of earrings I made with
some little rose squiggles and I quite like
how these turned out, I ended up making lots
of them but if you just take your pen and
draw a little spiral, you can get these neat
little roses. I hung them on some fancy rose
earwires that I made from one of my tutorials
and they're super light, they're really airy
and I think there's a lot of potential to
make jewelry, all kinds of different forms
and all kinds of neat things. I hope you liked
that. We'll put the links to where you can
get this pen and it's not expensive at all.
It's about 65 CAD so I don't know what the
price is in American but it should be a little
less and it comes with free shipping. Like
I said, the plastic themselves are only around--it's
about $14 for a big pack of them and they
have all kinds of colors and things like that.
We'll leave the links where you can get that.
Alright, so I hope you enjoyed that, I hope
you learned a little bit about 3D Printing
Pens and maybe you can start thinking outside
the box in how you can start using it in your
polymer clay studio and with your jewelry-making
projects. Alright, so if you like this video,
do let us know. If you've got a product you'd
like us to test, a demo, a technique, or something
that you don't understand, and you haven't
seen a video done on it yet by us, then make
sure to leave your suggestions in the comment
section below. We'll see you next time and
bye for now!
