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3-D Printing Pens 2.0: Smaller, Lighter and More Nimble A trio of inventors in Europe have announced a Kickstarter campaign for a new device that allows you to doodle in the air.

By Catherine Clifford

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

3-D doodling may feel like one of those "back to the future' concepts. Well, the future is already becoming old-school because there's already a next-generation 3-D printing pen.

A team of three inventors in Europe -- Delphine Eloise Wood, Anton Suvorov, and Ismail Baran -- have announced they will be taking their 3-D printing doodle pen, the Lix 3-D Pen, to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

3-D doodling means that you can draw in the air. It sounds pretty far out. We had to check out the video (embedded below) to understand completely.

Related: Re-Making Manufacturing in the United States

Lix bills itself as "the smallest 3-D pen in the world," with a thickness comparable to a normal writing pen. Others on the market, such as the 3Doodler, have been larger and more bulky.

Still, Lix isn't as easy to use as an everyday pen; it has to be plugged into a USB port and the user needs to feed a plastic string into it. But the output may be worth it: the pen allows a user to doodle in three dimensions by quickly melting and then cooling the plastic to form freestanding shapes.

When it comes to market, the Lix 3-D is estimated to cost $139.95. A limited number will be available for $70 for pre-order when the Kickstarter campaign launches, according to a company press release.

Related: From Relic to Beacon: Brooklyn Navy Yard Gets New Life as Cutting-Edge Manufacturing Hub

Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

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