Hey, we recently launched an add-on paste extruder for desktop FDM printers. It enables printing of materials like silicone, polyurethane, latex, wood filler, icing, nutella, etc.
We’re kickstarting it (of course), happy to answer any questions.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/structur3d/discov3ry-extruder-do-more-than-ever-with-your-3d
Closed source and expensive! But you’ve met your goal, so congrats, and good luck.
Thanks for the feedback and encouragement Adam.
IMHO the price is reasonable given that you can use your existing printer rather than having to buy an entirely new one to handle pastes, so you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck.
About the close/open issue, it’s one we’ve thought about a lot. This is from our page’s FAQ: “We hate being secretive, but we’ve spent cumulatively over year working on this product. So we feel the need to protect our investment, at least in the short term. As we move forward, further developing our product and building up a community of makers using our products, we intend to open source the initial design.”
Closed source is fine, but I would not recommend trying a patent. Many people have done paste extruders before you and many people will do paste extruders after you. Trying a patent would just piss off everyone, so please take that to heart and avoid being called slime like MakerBot. They have recently started attempting to patent things that others seem to have come up with or is a minor improvement and pissed off many people including myself.