Laird's Customizable Pen
This thing can be customized with MakerBot Customizer!
Open in Customizer
Description
Print a personalized pen body that fits the Pilot G2 ink cartridge. Includes cap and plug so it's fully usable.
Things I'm proud of:
- Cap slides on nicely.
- Plug inserts and turns to lock into place. (See detail rendering)
- Code is highly parametric, so it's been used to print pens for the Hi-Tec C, with a good, smooth fit.
Updated to expose a parameters to enable/disable support, or print individual parts. Thanks for the requests!
Things I'm proud of:
- Cap slides on nicely.
- Plug inserts and turns to lock into place. (See detail rendering)
- Code is highly parametric, so it's been used to print pens for the Hi-Tec C, with a good, smooth fit.
Updated to expose a parameters to enable/disable support, or print individual parts. Thanks for the requests!
Instructions
Want a pen that nobody can steal? Print one with your name on it. Or any other message you like. Very popular for birthdays and demos - the Pen prints fairly quickly, is personalized, and useful!
Use the Customizer and enter:
- Label is your name or another message
- Font. You know this one.
- Squish is a text scaling factor. 0.5 is narrow, 1.5 is wide. Adjust until the text fills the middle of the pen body. Leave an inch on either end for the cap to fit on.
- Letterspace controls the spacing between letters. 1.0 is normal. Fiddle with this if you like.
- txs: text shift (up/down) 0 is centered, 1.5 shifts down, centering text that has no descenders.
- c: color to print. 0 = one color, 1 = body, 2=text. Render both body and text to merge for dualstrusion.
- parts: All on one plate, or just the body, cap or plug. Print the pieces one at a time if you want to use different colors, or all at once for convenience.
- Ears: enable.disable 'ears' on the ends of the pen to reduce warping
- Support: enable or disable support under the tip to reduce warping
Print one, at least 20% infil - 100% infil doesn't use much plastic, and the pen is stronger. Make sure you have your filament diameter calibrated - the fit of the cap and plug to the body is precise. Peel off the 'ears' at the ends of the pen. and carve off the support under the tip of the pen (see detail rendering). Insert a Pilot G2 ink cartridge into the pen. Insert the plug to hold the ink cartridge, and turn it to lock it into place.
Pilot G2 cartridges are available at any office supply store, or amazon.com/Pilot-Refill-Grip-ExecuGel-Point/dp/B004E2TY0C .
Write. The G2 is a great gel cartridge, and yours is truly unique!
When you're done, put the cap on.
Use the Customizer and enter:
- Label is your name or another message
- Font. You know this one.
- Squish is a text scaling factor. 0.5 is narrow, 1.5 is wide. Adjust until the text fills the middle of the pen body. Leave an inch on either end for the cap to fit on.
- Letterspace controls the spacing between letters. 1.0 is normal. Fiddle with this if you like.
- txs: text shift (up/down) 0 is centered, 1.5 shifts down, centering text that has no descenders.
- c: color to print. 0 = one color, 1 = body, 2=text. Render both body and text to merge for dualstrusion.
- parts: All on one plate, or just the body, cap or plug. Print the pieces one at a time if you want to use different colors, or all at once for convenience.
- Ears: enable.disable 'ears' on the ends of the pen to reduce warping
- Support: enable or disable support under the tip to reduce warping
Print one, at least 20% infil - 100% infil doesn't use much plastic, and the pen is stronger. Make sure you have your filament diameter calibrated - the fit of the cap and plug to the body is precise. Peel off the 'ears' at the ends of the pen. and carve off the support under the tip of the pen (see detail rendering). Insert a Pilot G2 ink cartridge into the pen. Insert the plug to hold the ink cartridge, and turn it to lock it into place.
Pilot G2 cartridges are available at any office supply store, or amazon.com/Pilot-Refill-Grip-ExecuGel-Point/dp/B004E2TY0C .
Write. The G2 is a great gel cartridge, and yours is truly unique!
When you're done, put the cap on.
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License
Laird's Customizable Pen by laird is licensed under the Attribution - Non-Commercial - Creative Commons license.
Cool - can you make the "tabs" optional? The make it hard to fit it on my Cupcake platform.
Sure, I'll make them controllable in Customizer When I printed without tabs, I get curling, at least with ABS, but you may have better luck.
I think if you rotate 45 degrees it should fit, though it'll be close. It's actually fine if the ends of the 'tabs' run off the platform, as long as the extruder doesn't hit an end stop.