3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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Has anyone used a 3D pen on PLA prints? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 10 hours ago by [email protected] to c/3dprinting

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I designed a part that has compartments for small neodymium magnets. The compartments open up on the side of the part, but ideally the entire part should look smooth and featureless, and the epoxy I use is not the same color as the PLA. Also, I'd like to be able to fish out the magnets later, and epoxy is a bit too final for my taste.

So I'm thinking of dropping a small dollop of melted PLA into the openings to seal them, then file / polish them smooth. It would be sticky enough to hold the magnets in place yet easy to pop off with something pointy or sharp if need be.

And to do that cleanly, I figured I'd get me one of those cheap freehand 3D pens as a kind of precision "glue gun" for PLA. And it occurs to me that I might also be able to use it to "weld" small parts together, and hand-write things on parts with a different color filament.

I'm not much of an artist so I have no use for a 3D pen as an artsy tool. But it seems like a useful thing to have alongside a 3D printer, and they're not that expensive - even the more expensive Mynt3D 3D Pen Pro, which is the one I'm eyeing.

Does anybody know if those 3D pens can be used for small manual reworks / assembly of PLA parts?

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[–] IMALlama 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

For joining parts, you could also consider friction welding. I'm not sure how easy it would be to fill a cavity, but bond strength would be great since you would also be the heating the original part.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

The part is too small. It would immediately go through the part. Even opening up 1mm holes with a 1mm drilling has to be done no faster than a few rpm, otherwise the material softens and deforms.