There will probably come a time in every tinkerer’s life when a portable, fast-heating soldering iron becomes a necessity. Enter then the Pinecil soldering iron, a ~$30 gift that’ll tick all the above boxes.

Running on IronOS, a nimble soldering iron firmware that powers many other “smart” soldering irons, the Pinecil excels as a convenient and powerful benchtop tool. It’s compatible with a variety of TS100 tips, lets you perform hot swaps, and heats very quickly.

Powered by USB-C, the Pinecil can be set anywhere from 100 to 400 °C. Is it the best small programmable and portable fast-heating open-source soldering iron in the world? Well, probably.

Nozzles: so often we don’t think about the oozy little hot bits our molten filament emerges from. There is a tendency to just roll with whatever the manufacturer of our printer has provided, but better is possible, better is affordable, and better is a fabulous little gift idea.

For under $30, you can gift Slice Engineering’s new GammaMaster nozzle, a nozzle the firm says is “…the next evolution in nozzle technology.” Now, this little baby comes into its own printing abrasive filaments. Slice’s proprietary alloy, from which this nozzle is constructed, is claimed to offer the thermal performance of a standard brass nozzle but with a level of abrasion-shunning resistance so impressive that Slice Engineering offers a lifetime warranty against abrasive wear.

Available in three different designs, the “RepRap” size is appropriate for many desktop 3D printers (check compatibility before you buy!). A cost-effective upgrade for any 3D printer capable of printing abrasive filaments.

3D printing isn’t the only 3D hobby that has seen continual improvements and greater accessibility over the last few years. 3D scanning is also becoming something that is more affordable, consistent, and fun too.

Revopoint has been one of the bigger names behind 3D scanning in recent times, releasing a few smaller, more affordable, and easy-to-transport 3D scanners. Its latest is the Inspire: a scanner that is capable of capturing objects up to 2 meters squared at an accuracy of a tenth of a millimeter.

Currently available for ~$400, the Revopoint Inspire is competitively priced, and Revopoint’s reputation for making user-friendly 3D scanners with solid software means that the 3D printer, hobbyist, or archivist in your life is almost certainly going to cherish it.

Ah, the gift card. The gift to give to the person you have no idea what to gift. It’s a classic, and MatterHackers offers one of the best online stores for 3D printing and associated technologies on the entire webbyweb.

You can pick up a MatterHackers gift card with balances of $25, 50, 100, 250, or even $1,000 if you’re a gift card-gifting baller. The sheer range of goodies offered across MatterHackers’ website means whatever amount you gift, there will be plenty of options for the giftee to choose from, and, if you make sure you spend time looking over their shoulder, you might even get some ideas of what to gift them next holiday season.

Step aside, Bob Ross (RIP Bob), there’s a new way to make a picture riddled with happy little accidents, and it involves a 3D printer and, conveniently, one of Polymaker’s Hueforge bundles of filament.

A little primer: Hueforge is a software that lets you input an image, toggle some toggles and slide some sliders, and get a 3D printable file with instructions for when to enact a small number of manual color changes throughout the print. The result is a painting-like 3D print that emulates the image.

For the creative bod who’s into 3D printing, it’s a satisfying way to eke out a little more from the printer with very little know-how. Polymaker partners with the folks at Hueforge to offer color filament packs that are curated specifically for various artistic styles in Hueforge.

Polymaker Hueforge filament bundles start at ~$80, containing at least four 1-kg spools of PLA filament.

Despite being named like a spot at a heliport, the BigTreeTech Pad 7 is a fantastic way to get one of 2023’s hottest 3D printing products into your FDM 3D printer. Or rather, the FDM printer of the person you’re giving it to. Yes, let’s keep it about them, not us.

Behind the Pad 7’s expansive colorful touchscreen is a computer that brings Klipper, a firmware that can improve a printer’s performance through various advanced control methods, to virtually any printer you plug it into. Additionally, it gives you wireless control plus convenient access to the printer’s configuration files for ad-hoc changes that would require full firmware flashes simply to test on other machines. It’s neat.

This 7-inch (oh, so that’s why it’s called that…) touchscreen pad allows you to upgrade your printer with Klipper. At around $130, it’s a fine way to make you feel like you’ve got a new 3D printer, without actually buying a new 3D printer.

Nothing says I love you quite like a box of threaded inserts. To ordinary folks, it’s about as romantic as a cat hawking a furball beneath the Christmas Tree; but to the maker in the know, such a set is a gateway to pimping their prints in a way that’d make Xzibit proud.

Threaded inserts, sunk into a print using heat, allow said print to be securely attached to other prints, accessories, and all manner of vestigial stuff. It’s a satisfying way to go beyond glue and zip ties and give projects a little more permanence.

A full set complete with a range of thread sizes will set a productive printer up for a time. And if they already have some, get them more!

If you know someone just getting their start in 3D printing, do them a favor and banish moisture from their filaments with a dry box.

Spools of material left open to the atmosphere will gradually soak up moisture from the air, which consequently makes them not much fun to print with. The prints look bad, aren’t as strong, and you run the risk of gunking up your printer, forcing early maintenance. Not fun.

Yes, it’s possible to recover the spool by giving it a low and slow cook, but who has the time for that? Instead, for ~$65 this filament dryer by Sunlu can actively heat up to 70°C and features an air circulation fan to help it dry out funky filament in just a couple of hours.

Of course, the filament won’t reach such a state if left in the box from the get-go. An LCD panel lets you punch in the specifics of the filament you’re using and see the status of the current drying cycle.

Calipers are the single most useful tool in your kit when it comes to designing 3D printable replacements and objects to fit into your life. A decent set will pay for itself over and over once you’ve mastered the dark art of “oh, I can 3D print that instead” that they enable.

Capable of precisely measuring different dimensions (internal and external spaces, depth, and steps), a set of calipers does the job so much better than a ruler or, dare we say it, eyeballing it.

We like this set by Clockwise Tools for its ergonomics, measurements in mm plus inches in decimal and fractional forms. Also, the battery sits snugly embedded in a bay in the body, reducing the chance of accidentally releasing the caliper’s coin cell-style battery – an irritant we find with surface-mounted battery styles some calipers use.

Bridging the gap between a couple of gifts we mentioned above, this product from the engineering maestro behind the CNC Kitchen YouTube channel slots neatly into TS100 and TS101-style soldering irons (including the Pinecil above) and allows for the precise and even positioning of heat-sunk threaded inserts.

It sounds simple, and it is. And while it’s certainly possible to get by with just the iron to sink these suckers into a 3D print, a tool to help you do it easily is exactly the kind of thing someone may convince themself they don’t need but would actually love to receive as a gift.