16. Wildcard Week

Individual Assignment

• Design and produce something with a digital process (incorporating computer aided design and manufacturing) not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it.

Pen Turning

1. Bandsaw

I started out with a long stick of wood that I needed to shorten to the length of the brass tube in the pen kit, which was two inches. I needed to cut two pieces that were the same length. I used a bandsaw to shorten the wood pieces. I made sure to measure each piece and draw a line before going straight to the bandsaw.

Here is an image of my measured wood pieces:

Here is an image of the bandsaw I used with the help of Cooper Cumbus and Noah Smith:

2. Lathe: Making the Hole

Next, I needed to use the lathe to do wood turning and create a hole in the middle of each of the wood pieces.

1. Mark the centers of the wood pieces using the diagonal line method.
2. Wear a face shield whenever near the machine. Headphones are optional.
3. Use the lathe chuck key to loosen the area that holds the wood.

4. Place the wood leaving some room between the wood and the edge and tighten it. Make sure to remove the lathe chuck key after tightening.

5. Turn the silver handle until the number reads 0.

6. Move the machine to the desired position and then move the silver handle in the back to lock the machine in place. I moved the machine so that the end of the metal tip was barely touching the front of the wood piece.

It is important to make sure it is lined up with the center of the wood piece.

7. Turn the machine on by flipping the switch.

8. Turn the silver wheel until you can see the metal tip poking out the other side of the wood.

9. Turn the machine off. Turn the silver wheel until the number reads 0 and the metal tip is completely out of the wood.
10. Use the lathe chuck key to loosen the wood holder and gently pull it out. Ensure the hole goes all the way through the wood piece.

3. Sand Brass

We needed to sand the brass tubes, ensuring that the outside was rough. The lower the grade of sandpaper, the easier it was to roughen the tubes, so I found it was best to use sandpaper with 60 and 80 roughness. I struggled with sanding the brass enough because I started out using sandpaper that was not rough enough. After switching to 80, it became much easier, and the sanding was much more efficient, and then once I switched to 60, I finished quickly.

This is the kit we used to make the pen.

Here are the two wood pieces with the sandpaper and two brass tubes:

4. Gluing the Brass Tubes

I used super glue to glue the brass tube in the wood and then used activator to speed up the drying process. I tried to be careful to not use too much glue because the brass tubes needed to be fully clear in order to continue and use the lathe again.

This is the glue I used:

5. Lathe: Rounding the Wood

1. Wear a face mask and face shield anywhere near a running machine because the wood pieces can go flying, and you do not want to inhale wood dust.
2. Place 1 baron, 1 piece of wood, 1 baron, 1 piece of wood, 1 baron and then the gold disc on the metal pole that goes into the lathe.

3. Use a wrench to tighten the metal pole in place until it will not turn anymore.

4. Turn the lathe on.
5. Use the square chisel to get rid of the excess wood around the outside. Keep using the square chisel until the wood piece gets to be slightly greater than the size you want it to be. Rest your left pointer finger in the finger slot while holding the metal part of the chisel with your left hand and the end of the chisel with your right hand. Slowly move the chisel back and forth horizontally, tilting the metal tip slightly upwards. Try to move the chisel evenly across and make the wood roughly the same size for each piece.

Here is a video of me using the lathe:

These are my wood pieces after using the square chisel:

6. Switch to the circle chisel. This will help round the edges of the wood and create a smoother, rounder look. Rest your left pointer finger in the finger slot while holding the metal part of the chisel with your left hand and the end of the chisel with your right hand.Slowly move the chisel back and forth horizontally, tilting the metal tip slightly upwards. Try to move the chisel evenly across and make the wood roughly the same size for each piece. Once the pieces are roughly the same size, you can choose to round the edges making the front and back ends of one piece rounded inwards creating a classic front-of-pen look.

These are my wood pieces after using the circle chisel:

7. Once you have the desired shape, select around 5 pieces of sandpaper ranging from 300 grit to 2000 grit. In increasing order, hold each piece of sandpaper on each of the wood pieces for around 20 seconds, sliding it slowly back and forth horizontally. Make sure to sand the ends too, and sand each piece evenly. I had used the lathe to make my wood pieces pretty thin, so I had to make sure not to use too rough sandpaper for too long because that would make my wood pieces too thin and possibly break.
8. Turn the lathe off. Use the wrench to unscrew the metal pole and gently remove the barons, gold disc, and wood pieces.

Here are my final wood pieces after sanding:

6. Assembling the Pen Kit/Using Pen Press

Pen Kit

Cooper Cumbus helped me with this process.

1. I used the Rockler Gold Slimline Pen Kit to make my pen. With the wood pieces and the remaining kit materials, I used a pen press machine to assemble the pen. The pen press pushes the materials securely together.
2. To assemble the front half of the pen, align the cone-shaped tip with the thicker wood piece that you want at the front. Place the cone-shaped tip into the small circle in the white part of the pen press and push gently to hold it in place. Once aligned and correctly positioned, push the pen press and then pull it away. Make sure that the tip is firmly pressed into the wood.

3. Take the silver tube and push the gold end into the front wood piece until the wood barely touches the black line. Once you think it is touching the black line, take the ink tube and place it through the tube to make sure the pen tip is out enough to write with.

4. Set the front half of the pen off to the side.
5. Take the cap and clip and place that into the other wood piece. Push these components together to make up the back part of the pen. I struggled with lining the pieces up correctly for these pieces, but after pushing it in a little, my teacher was able to help me align it enough to continue pressing it all the way.

6. Use the pen press to press the front half of the pen, the center ring, and the back half of the pen together.

Here is my fully assembled pen:

7. Engraving

I used a rotary engraver to engrave my pen. I chose to engrave on the lighter piece of wood so that the engraving would be more clear. I just wanted to engrave my name to keep my pen simple but also personalized. Cooper Cumbus, Tyler Russell, Noah Smith, and I worked together to learn how to use the rotary engraver with the help of Mr. Budzichowski, one of the engineering teachers at our school.

1. TURN THE LASER CUTTER OFF. This is very important because it can be a safety hazard or destory the machine if the engraver is plugged into the laser cutter while it is on.

2. Plug the rotary engraver into the laser cutter.

3. Turn the laser cutter on. It will automatically home, which should take around five minutes or less. The bed will be lowered automatically.

4. Pick the engraver up gently, and relocate it to the top left corner of the laser cutter. It should be lined up with the corner.

5. Place the pen into the engraver making sure that whichever part you want engraved on is on the right. I wanted the back hald of my pen to get engraved to I put the tip of my pen on the left and the end on the right before tightening it.

6. Set up the design on the computer. I made my design in CorelDraw and just made my name in a cool font. Then, I hit print, and the text appeared in the Epilog Engraver software.

Here are the material settings that I used:

7. Then, I had to manually enter the location where I wanted my name to engrave on the pen. This took some trial and error because the camera on the laser cutter was misaligned with the rotary engraver. To test if my name would engrave in the correct location, I sent my file over to the laser cutter, pressed the button on the far right bottom of the laser cutter screen, next to the joystick icon, and that ran a red dot over the area the cut would occur.

This was the first trial run I did:

As you can tell, it was not very aligned, so I adjusted the location significantly on my next try.

These are the location settings I ended up using:

This was my final test before engraving it:

8. My last step was to engrave it. I just pressed the play button on the laser cutter and the engraving took less than ten seconds to finish.

This is a video of my pen getting engraved:

I was very pleased with the final results. Here is my final pen:

Files

Pen Engraving Design File

Reflection

This week was fairly easy for me because I had already done pen turning before Fab Academy, but that was with the guidance and careful instruction of instructors. However, this time, I did it independently with some of my peers, so it was a bit more of a challenge. I also had never done that kind of engraving before, so that was really cool.

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Last update: May 28, 2025