As a man who loves things that come out of tubes, I am excited about the Discov3ry Extruder. Designed as an add-on to popular 3D printers, the system is essentially a plunger connected to a nozzle that squirts out pastes of various types including icing, Nutella, spackle, and silicone.

The product just launched on Kickstarter and has surpassed its goal of $30,000. The extruder itself should work on most major 3D printers including RepRap machines and Makerbots. The extruder itself attaches to the standard extruder tip of the printer and then you have to set the specifications for various substances, including the aforementioned Nutella.

The extruder costs $249 for early birds and uses disposable syringes to hold the pastes. Rubber tubing carries to paste to the machine which is then pushed out like the standard plastic filament normally used by these printers.

Created by Charles Mire, John Mardlin, and Andrew Finkle of Waterloo, Ontario, the product is a reaction to the dearth of usable paste extruders. “Paste printing is a difficult problem. Many attempts at an affordable paste extruder have been made previously,” they write. “By focusing on reinventing only the parts of the printer that are involved with the delivery and extrusion of the material means that we’re able to move faster, and develop a better product.”

The product will ship in October.

Source: Techcrunch.com