Lightweight Mechanical Pencil [fully 3D printed]

Twisting Mechanical Pencil

(Leave a comment if you have any questions!)

A lightweight mechanical pencil (~11 g) with a minimalist design that uses only friction to hold the lead in place, eliminating the need for springs and other non-3D printed parts. It extends the lead by twisting the top and clicking into place, and retracting the lead is as simple as turning it the other way and pushing it back in.

It fits 6cm long leads with different diameters depending on the model:

0.5 mm

0.7 mm

0.9/1.0 mm

The only thing that's different between the models is the tip, so if you want more sizes in one pencil, all you have to do is print out the tip, unscrew the one you're currently using and screw on the new one. I've made this process fast so you can easily do it in under 2 seconds.

The lead is inserted from the front; be sure to insert it in the center of the tip so it's not skewed.

There is a place for a 5mm eraser, but I didn't have any left.

You could print each part without supports, but I wouldn't recommend it for two parts, so I created custom supports for one of them, and for the other, the slicer has good enough supports.

I designed this model because I needed a mechanical pencil and was too lazy to buy one (but not too lazy to spend several hours designing one and learning Blender for 3D animation, apparently).

If something goes wrong during the print or the print fails, refer to this guide: https://www.simplify3d.com/resources/print-quality-troubleshooting/

(or you can just ask me)