14 DAY TRIAL // We've seen a few 3D printing pens in the past two years, but human minds are always cooking up new and weird things. One of the entries during this year's Electrolux Design Lab competition is definitely a bit out there, though its usefulness cannot really be denied.
Granted, we already have ways to mend clothing, but sewing kits aren't the sort of thing you carry around in your bag or purse just in case. Sure, on a trip you might include one in your trunk, but not when you go to school or a friend's house.
That is why Ingrida Kazėnaitė, a student at VDA Kaunas in Lithuania and one of the people who participated in the contest, came up with a pen that can 3D print things out of fabric. No longer will you be defeated by a scratched suit on the way to prom.
Called Fabric Pen, it is the size of a, well, pen, and allows you to scan a damaged portion of your clothes, after which you can print a patch that is automatically attached to the area.
The pen not only matches the color of the fabric, but also the texture. In theory, the patch job should not be distinguishable at all, or at least not easily.
The pen is based on Fabrican, a spray-on fabric that forms non-woven fabric by means of cross-linking fibers. Basically, Ingrida Kazėnaitė took the idea of a fabric particle delivery system and turned it into something innocuous that you can take anywhere.
As far as 3D printing pens go, the Fabric Pen is definitely a leap forward, or perhaps a step to the side, on a different lane of the road. Some may say it is a different evolutionary path altogether, and there are definitely supporting arguments for that.
After all, all the other 3D printing pens only exist so that you can “draw” things on a page and in the air, building all sorts of objects from molten plastic (3Doodler, Lix) or ink (CreoPop, which uses light to cure ink and make it solid).
The Fabric Pen has a much more specific purpose and uses a totally different material. It also seems to be much more advanced in terms of color support.
On the flip side, since all it's supposed to do is patch jobs, a case could be made that Fabric Pen is not a 3D printing pen at all, but just a fancy sort of market or “glue” pen.