So I Broke My Brand New 3D Pen That I Had Bought With Steemit Earnings

As you may have seen of late I have been a little obsessed with my new toy, a truly wonderful gift from my partner @ausbitbank and the really beautiful part was that we used our steemit earnings to purchase it.

I have even done a series of posts about the pen firstly the unboxing, then one on purchasing more materials with steemit earnings and then finally the last one in which I show off my very first 3D pen creation.

Since getting given the pen I have spent an insane amount of time working with it, planning on things I want to make and I have even started three separate projects after using all to supplies in multiple colours - hence ordering more filament already.

Countless hours working with the pen appear to have come at a grave cost, in the very early hours of Friday night (1:30am) I was diligently working on completing my main project when the pen started to act up - it started to slow down and then dramatically ceased to function at all with the screen flashing error.

I was devastated but I still had hope, maybe it had just overheated - I had been working continuously for over five hours on this one project, maybe if I let it cool down it would be ok.

I waited for twenty minutes, tested the temperature at the extraction nozzle to check if it was cool when it was I attempted my first restart - to my delight it lit up and went into standby mode.

I anxiously waited as the device was in preheat mode, the red LED turned green all was good in the world and then I tried to use it - it abruptly flashed back to red and then flashed error and then nothing.

I tried to be an optimist maybe it was still overheated internally and I couldn't feel the temperature because of the shielding, I decided I'd wait longer and see if that would work - it's now two in the morning but I'm not giving up.

While I kept waiting I started to look online surely somewhere in Queensland would sell 3D pens right, well after an hour of searching I wasn't so sure - we had heaps of full sized 3d printers but printing pens we not so easy to find.

Feeling more disheartened than ever I returned for my final attempt at a pen reboot, but I was faced with the same error read as the previous attempts - it was now three in the morning, the night was vanishing fast and I knew my little monsters would soon be awake and ready to reap havik.

I now knew for sure the pen was dead and what's more, it looked as though it could take weeks to get a replacement from America.

I became a bit of an emotional mess, I'm still not used to having money for luxury items like these and now I was up for my second in just over a week of owning it.

But @ausbitbank reassured me the expense was worth it so I kept searching for anything suitable available in Australia, i found one pen but it only took cartridges and I had just spent $400 on multiple 1kg rolls of filament.

I started to think I had no options left, when finally at four in the morning I found it - Jaycar had a 3D pen in stock and it was only a twenty minute drive to go pick it up.

I frantically placed the order and arranged to pick it up the next day, I was stoked the pen was almost identical to the one I had just broken and this one came with an easy to collect 12 month warranty.

On top of this they also had a 3D printing tool kit and another roll of blue PLA filament (my roll was almost finished), I ordered the three items in time to head to bed at four thirty in the morning - unfortunately I was back up shortly after.

As the day went on I received an email saying my order was ready to collect and sure enough within an hour of that email, I had my brand new replacement 3D pen and I was ready to get back to work.

There is no way possible I would have been able to afford this two months ago, if it wasn't an essential item it wasn't bought - now and all thanks to steemit, I have an amazing tool with supplies that I can create content for steemit with.

My new pen is fantastic in many ways but it does have some major issues, the slider has more control than the last one but it is still only three speed settings and it is very sensitive - so if you're not careful you can suddenly have more than you bargained for.

The other and in my opinion biggest issue is that the temperature control is analog rather than digital, this means finding a tool (as one was not provided) that can fit into the small opening and then twist a dial - the markings are so small there is no way to know what they say to be sure your even having an effect.

What I do know is that I require more heat and nothing so far has helped achieve that, even spinning the little dial ( I will try again though) - the problem with too little heat is that the filament doesn't adhere well to the previous layer, this makes a mess and is very hard to work with.

But besides that I am stoked, I am back on track with my new 3D pen and again it's all thanks to steemit!

Now my only issue is to wait for the supplies I ordered last week to arrive, as I am still going through filament like there's no tomorrow.

It's time to post this because I really can't wait to get back to it!

Like what you've read so far?
Check out my story

or follow me on twitter @krystlehaines