Inside a 3D printing pen

From bigclivedotcom.

There’s probably a legitimate use for these things. But I’m not sure what it is yet.

You plug it into a suitably rated (2A) USB power supply, load standard PLA filament and can then doodle with a stream of molten plastic.

The circuitry is VERY cost optimised with the buttons and LEDs most likely being multiplexed on the same pins as the LCD display. But other than that it contains what you’d expect. An H-bridge motor driver, MOSFET for the heater and a voltage regulator for the microcontroller.

I started doing a full reverse engineering on this, but after my sharp meter probe had slipped off a microscopic resistor connection for the 50th time I stopped.

This thing is surprisingly well made for the cost. It has a custom ceramic heater tip and a robust metal filament drive system.

Sorry for the lack of schematic. This video came too close to another that had taken three evenings to reverse engineer, and I just wasn’t in the mood for a cryptic multiplexing system with LEDs, LCD display, buttons and analogue sensing all multiplexed onto a low pin-count microcontroller.

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