4 ms·
It is pretty easy to use a 3d printer as a pen plotter. You can easily print a pen holder that mounts to your print head. This one (https://www.thingiverse.co
by ortusdux 5y ago
It is pretty easy to use a 3d printer as a pen plotter. You can easily print a pen holder that mounts to your print head. This one (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3139205 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3139205) includes a retaining screw for different sized pens. I have also seen mods for CNCs that will click retractable sharpies and then use them for layout or part marking. Here is one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3LhK2SAusk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3LhK2SAusk
As a side note, the MUJI gel pen from the 3rd image (Tesselations, August 2017) are amazing.
- neitherboosh 5y agoI have an Ender 3 (one of the cheapest available consumer 3D printers) and have had success using Inkscape to generate gcode for it. For anyone interested, Processing/p5.js are great tools for programmatically generating .svgs for plotting. It’s great fun! Thinking about making some wall art soon. I also have a MUJI notebook on my desk that I use to sketch out ideas before coding them :)
- pronoiac 5y agoI've heard that if you're using different-sized pens on the same print, it can be better to wrap them in tape to fit, to avoid alignment issues.
- roland35 5y agoI had some issues with my g code files on my prusa printer - I think it expects some special start up sequence of g code. There is also an x y z offset which seemed useful, but it replaced my calibration so I needed to recalibrate after!
- joshu 5y agoone issue is that pens need to have some compliance to the surface (versus a 3d printer or CNC, which don't) to get good lines on my CNC machine, I had to make a slide on the z axis with a spring to apply force downward with the pen.