Customizable TEXT pencil holder

thingiverse

Choose any text you want to make a pencil holder or letter sculpture. UPDATE: coming soon: can calculate spacing for each letter pair based on the letter widths, so it doesn't have to be done manually. This is an easier to use and more general design than my previous pencil holders. It's strangely pleasing to have little word sculptures. To fit standard pencils, scale the Z-height to 11 mm before printing the .stl.file. See Instructions for some tips on customizing. BrandonW6 had a similar idea for a 3D text pen last year:http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:45576 It's quite nice, with a different, retro font, upper and lower case, and spaces allowed between letters. And whpthomas improved it for Bic pens and added a cap:http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:148722/ Instructions Using Maker Desktop Beta 3.2, targeting a Replicator (Dual) device, and printing on a Flashforge Creator, scaling to 11 mm for the Z-height is about right for many 6-sided pencils. Can be printed without a raft. Though you can use Thingiverse's nice Customizer interface, it's easier to visualize customizations if you download TEXTpencil.scad and open it with OpenSCAD, an application that you can install for free.http://www.openscad.org/downloads.html Especially for longer words, setting the right spacings for each letter gets a bit tedious. Set the variables show_pencil = 1, show_hole = 0 so you can quickly see your customizations with by pressing F5. When you are happy with your design, set the variables back to no pencil and show hole, check that it looks OK by pressing F6, then export from OpenSCAD into a .stl file, and import that file into Makerbot or whatever 3D printing tool you use.