Anyone ever tried a hand held extruder?

I know a number of 3d print pens were making rounds, with very mixed reviews. But doing some searching, I was surprised I didn't find any home made ones. Considering I'm sure there are a lot of reprappers out there with spare extruders/hotends laying around, has anyone tried operating one by hand? What were the results?

That sounds like a fun little project. but for me personally I have a full printer no need for something less.

I have tried both a 3D printing pen and using one of my extruders as a hand-held device. The printing pen was a bit of a disappointment up close. It jammed easily, made a lot of noise, and was much more difficult to use than the videos make it look. Holding an extruder is even more difficult since the activation button was in my other hand and the extruder has a fair amount of hot zones. I had to be careful not to burn myself.

... I've tried one of the cheaper 3D-pens - it worked without jamming, but the internal plastic fittings for the motor were really brittle, so separated after dismantling the housing for inspection ... and found abraded powder of the filament all around the feeder, what can cause problems too.

Testing with a common extruder shows similar results, but the extruded plastic was hotter than with the pen, so needs more time to solidify ... a bit like working with a hot-glue-gun ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I've tried a 3D pen... It does not work well with me... my hand is shaking too much and I am no artist ... so my print is terrible.

Yea, It feels like playing with a glue gun.

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BotFeeder - Professional Manufactured 3D Filament

They have this good brand pen at my academy. To be honest.. It's only a gimmick, and it's not something interesting. I'd say: get a 3D-printer.

Maybe someone can work magic with it, but it has to do with creative talent and out-of-the-box thinking. The pen by is just a hypey object/gimmick.

The way I've seen it used most is that people draw a 2D image on a 'print bed' kind of material and then combine multiple 2D images to make up a 3D object. Drawing a 3D object freehand is very hard to do, and if you manage to make something anywhere near nice, it still doesn't look that good.

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

There's someone doing that on the french-speaking section on the forum (a kickass school teacher, IIRC once done the "3d pen" will be a project in his class), but as last September it's still a WIP.

Also some pictures sets; usefull in the likely event of a unintelligible google translation

flickr albums
forum

... the best example I've seen until now was a dress, assembled from some hundred 2D and 3D roses 'drawn' on a mannequin and reassembled into the complete dress ... but this job needed a lot of free time

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]