Hot Glue Gun Extruder 3DP Experiment

By on June 15th, 2012 in Hardware, Ideas

Tags:

Another 3D printing experiment appeared on Hack A Day, in which a common workshop hot glue gun was persuaded to act as an extruder for a hobby 3D printer. 
 
At first this might make sense, as the hot glue gun does extrude material that solidifies. However, after watching the video and thinking about it, we believe this is probably not a terrific way to extrude. While it might be less expensive to make, there are issues: 
 
  • The extruded “glue” seems to slump considerably, meaning rough surfaces and likely difficulties in printing even slight overhangs
  • The glue feeder is limited in capacity to the size of standard glue sticks. Ok for small prints, but anything large would be tricky, unless you build an “auto-feeder”
  • It’s really slow. Large prints would take a very long time to complete
 
But now we know, thanks to an idea and an experiment. 
 

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!