Pen Plotter Attachment / Easy Snap-On / (Ender 3 V3 SE & BIC Pens)

This is a pen plotter attachement specifically made for use with a BIC standart ballpoint pen and the Ender 3 V3 SE. 

Needed Parts and Tools:

• Parts of the 3D model itself.

• BIC Standart Ballpoint Pen

• 1 Metal Spring with properties such as around 15mm height and 6mm diameter

• Super Glue

Print Instructions:

• No supports are needed. All sizes were made in consideration of bridging sag of the melted filament. If for some reason your filaments sagging properties are drastically different from mine, not sure what to do about that but it is a small possibility to consider and adjust properly.

• Print orientation should be as is. Try not to change any parts orientation, as I said, all bridging were considered before hand.

Building:

• Put the pen inside the shaft. 

• Put the spring into the small part.

• Put some super glue onto the side lips of the small part that contains the spring while trying to make sure the spring doesnt hold onto any glue at all. It has to be able to freely compress inside.

• Put those parts together with some force and hold it in position until the glue hardens.

• (Recommended) Apply more glue to the outer part of the connection to make it stronger. It may leave some visual residue. To get rid of it, you can use some electrical tape as I did to hide those as much as you can.

• (Must do) After all of this, make sure that the pen shaft has slight movement capabilities in the Z axis directions. If it seems to be stuck, dont use it or be much more careful during Z adjustments during printing. It may hurt the toolhead or the bed if too much pressure is made while writing with the pen.

Features:

• Accidental Z-axis crashes happen. To protect the printer, I have intentionally integrated specific thin "weak sections" into the model. If a catastrophic user error occurs (like driving the pen too deep into the bed), the plastic mount should snap and not stand the force generally, sacrificing the product to protect the printer from damage, hopefully. Though I must say, I didnt test this feature to see if it would work or not, so please be careful with adjusting your Z-axis!

• The spring-loaded mechanism ensures constant, even pressure on the paper and protects your print bed from uneven spots or slight leveling variances.

• Attaches directly to the Extruder Motor without any screws. Attachment can be done by hand in mere seconds.

• The tip diameter is precisely made to allow the ink cartridge of the pen to be easily removed, but restrict the outer shell from getting out. With this, if the ink runs out or something like that, you can change it easily. Also lets you easily change colours aswell.

Usage:

• Attach a paper with small magnets to the bed to lock it on securely.

• Run your printer's standard Auto-Home (G28) sequence before clipping the plotter on. After that, move the Z height to around 20 to be able to attach the part. Now, you can attach the plotter.

• Manually adjust the position of the toolhead as much as to the bottom-left corner of the bed. And adjust the Z height so that the tip of the pen is barely touching but not able to leave ink on the paper.

• For GCODE production, I am using drawingbotv3, rest of the instructions will be according to that program.

• In the drawing section, make your own preset with Width: 202.5 and Height: 193.5 and Padding: 10 - 10 - 10 - 10 for clearence of the magnets.

• In the Preferences tab, go to the GCODE Settings tab to make changes to the Start, End, Pen Down, Pen Up GCODE settings:

  • Start GCODE:

    • G21

      G90

      M18 E

      G92 X0 Y0 Z0

      G0 Z5 F2000

  • End GCODE:

    • G0 Z10

      G0 X0 Y0

      M84

  • Pen Down GCODE:

    • G1 Z-0.5

  • Pen Up GCODE:

    • G0 Z2

• With these settings, you should be able to properly produce GCODEs to run with the Pen Plotter.

• For any further assistance, I recommend using a LLM to help you through the program. You can also leave a comment and I would be more than happy to assist but I must say I am no expert lol.

If you make a cool drawing with this, please post a make! I'd love to see what you create. Thanks for checking the project out!