A very sophisticated 3D printing pen is designed to accurately repair resin 3D prints.
The “Fixer3D” is a 3D printing pen, to be sure, but it is unlike the vast majority of those numerous tools. The typical 3D printing pen is simply a heater that pulls in a small section of plastic filament. It’s like holding the hot end of your 3D printer in your hand, and the resulting accuracy is about what you’d expect. I’ve even seen a couple of resin-based 3D pens, but they suffer from similar operational issues: they’re hard to control.
Without a 3D pen, it can be more challenging to repair a wonky print, particularly with resin applied with a handheld syringe. There’s no way to easily moderate the amount of resin you might squirt on your cracked or pitted print, and if you mistakenly apply UV light to cure that syrupy liquid, you’ve wrecked your print.
These problems appear to be solved with the Fixer3D, a rather sophisticated resin-based 3D printing pen. Essentially, it’s a syringe, but one precisely controlled by a mechanical system.
Powered by integrated rechargeable lithium batteries, the Fixer3D includes a screw powered by a small stepper motor that precisely moves the syringe’s plunger.
If that wasn’t enough, the Fixer3D also includes an integrated UV lamp that can very quickly cure resin as it produces a highly focused beam.
But wait, you ask, what if a mistake is made? How does the Fixer3D handle this?
First, the device is programmable, so that each touch of the button releases a consistently sized resin droplet. By adjusting the size, any fixup can be attempted.
Here’s the really interesting feature: if you happen to deposit too many droplets, the stepper motor can reverse and the syringe can suck up stray resin as required! I don’t know of other 3D pens that can do this.
For now, the Fixer3D is available on their crowdfunding page, where you can pick one of these up for a mere USD$99.
And it looks pretty good, too.
Via Kickstarter
