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Comment by mbell | Hacker News Reader

So its a hot glue gun with a fine tip and auto-feed?

The 'hot glue' is thin enough and needs to be hot enough to let you 'float' what you're drawing in mid air, hot glue would stay viscous for too long to let that happen.

Yeah I think this is what a lot of people are missing with the glue gun comments. With a glue gun you can make a blob at the base but you can't string a piece along like this, much less string a piece along in mid air. This also has the fan which helps in that matter.

Thats caused by the material, not the gun. The kickstarter says they use standard ABS/PLA 3mm plastic for the material.

The first rep-rap 3D printer used a tweaked hot glue gun as the extruder.

I'd like to see more mid-air drawing in action. The video only shows how to make a spiral, a cube and some finishing touch on the dinosaur.

Though they are showing photos of objects that must have been created this way, it's not clear how well this goes in practice.

It seems the Eiffel Tower is made by drawing over a CAD printout and welding the pieces together.

I don't think they mean to impress the techies. The product's market is clearly creative/artistic people. Creative/Artistic people did not have easy access to a medium like this. I see this company popularizing an artistic medium (like canvas, paper, stone) by providing an easy-to-obtain tool to make the art.

I can see a few moms and schools wanting to buy something like this for their kids. This will also be a hit at kids' parties just like the fancy shaped balloons. Also, I doodle badly and I want one :)

It's more like a standalone "print head" out of a 3d printer.

Perhaps could even be reutilized as one? I see it is a 50 USD off-the-self extruder for your DIY 3D printer. Add steppers with electronics, draw by hand some fixtures, add "vitamins" (nuts, bolts etc.) and and go.

Not really usable as an extruder because you need to be able to control extrusion amount precisely. At that price, there is definitely a DC gearmotor inside with absolutely no way to control position or speed.

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