A Pen That Prints in 3D While You Draw

The 3 Doodler, from Wobble Works presents the opportunity to print your own creations in 3D. 3Doodler is the world’s first and only 3D Printing Pen. Using ABS plastic (the material used by many 3D printers), 3Doodler draws in the air or on surfaces. It’s compact and easy to use, and requires no software or computers. You just plug it into a power socket and can start drawing anything within minutes.

Template allow the 3Doodler to print your very own artist-designed 3Doodles.

The Ink (i.e. ABS/PLA plastic): The 3Doodler uses 3mm ABS or PLA plastic as its “ink” – just like a 3D printer. Each 3Doodler backed on Kickstarter comes with at least one bag of plastic; each bag will contain ten 1ft strands of plastic; and each 1 ft strand produces approximately 11 ft of 3Doodling fun… yes, you read that right, a foot of plastic goes a very long way in the 3Doodler.

Wobble Works plans to offer plastic sold in strands (making it easy to switch colours and create different styles), but 3Doodler-compatible plastic is also available in 1kg spools from between $30 to $55 from a variety of sources. They are not mistreating customers like the old fashion printer companies do with broken by design print cartridges, $8,000 a gallon ink and the like.

As of right now (in the first 24 hours of launch) on Kickstarter they have $449,797 pledged (with an original goal of $30,000).

Related: Qubits Construction ToyAmazing New Light Field Camera: Adjust Focus After You Take the PictureThe Latest Leap in Computer Control via GestureMake Your Own Chalkboard Paint

Universal Translator on the Way

Universal translators are a gadget I think will be great. We still are not there, but we keep getting closer. Microsoft, Google and Apple are doing a great deal of work on making this happen.

At the end of this webcast Microsoft demonstrates speaking in English and having that translated and then output in spoken Chinese.

Related: Getting Closer to a Universal TranslatorSony Student Design Workshop: Print Odor on PostcardsComputer Control via Gesture

Raspberry Pi: $25 Computer

image of a circuit board diagram

Raspberry 1 circuit board diagram

One great thing about technology is all the great disruptive innovation it makes possible. And while some gadgets cost a large amount of money it is also great how many really cheap but nevertheless extremely cool gadgets we get to choose from. The folks at Rasberry Pi are creating this computer (alpha boards have been sent to the manufacturer), that just a bit larger than a credit card, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system.

The ICs used in the design are an ARM-based application processor (center) and an SMSC LAN9512 USB 2.0 hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller (right and down from center). The SDRAM is mounted on top of the application processor in a PoP configuration.

Following the example of the BBC Micro, we intend to launch both a Model A device (lacking the LAN9512, and with 128MB of RAM) at the $25 price point, and a Model B device (including the LAN9512, and with 256MB of RAM) for a $5-10 additional cost. We remain confident of shipping before the end of 2011.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.

They are developing, manufacturing and distributing an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children and expect the computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.

Provisional specification
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