16. Wildcard Week

Overview

This week I did made a pen and engraved my last name into it. It was a fun and enjoyable experiance

Cutting the Wood

The first part in making the pen was decidng which wood I was going to use. In our Fab Lab we have lots of unique types of wood so it was hard to choose. In the end I made half the pen be two pieces of darker wood and then the bottom half have a lighter color so it would be easier to engrave into.

Heres my friend using the table saw to cut off the desiered 3/4 of an inch wood

Heres me using the jigsaw to cut the pieces of wood into their deisered length

And heres both the pieces after cutting them

Lathe

Drilling the holes

I used the lathe for two parts when making my pen, first I used it to drill a hole in the center in both pieces of wood. To do this, the lathe in the lab has an attachement that we could put the block of wood in and then the wood would be spinning.

Lathe Workflow

  • Setup
    • Put a face shield on to protect yourself in case the piece goes flying off
    • Plug in the machine and make sure its powered
    • Unscrew the chuck using the lathe chuck key and secure your piece of wood into the machine
    • Double check since its the chuck that spins not the tool bit
    • Instal the bit onto the carriage and tailstock away from the chuck
    • Make sure the only thing visible on the drill bit is with the 1 inch mark or the first black line
    • Unscrew the carriage and move it to where the bit is barely touching the wood
    • If your on the newer machine turn it on and select your feed rate and wait for the chuck to get up to the speed
    • If your on the old one just wait until the wood starts spinning fast enough
  • While Using
    • Once the chuck has reached the desired feed, slowly begin turning the the handle so the tool bit begins to move forward into the wood
    • Once you reach the furthest point of the tool bit marked by a black line or have gone 6 inches then turn off the machine
    • From their rewind the tool bit to its original position and if it has gone the desired length unscrew but if not move the carriage until the tool bit hits the end part of the wood it stopped at
    • You’ll know by not being able to move the carriage forward anymore
    • Repeat this process until the desired depth is achieved and then unscrew the wood from the chuck and vacuum up the sawdust around and on the machine

Videos

Heres me using the lathe to drill into one of my pieces of wood.

Brass tubes

After I drilled the holes, I superglued the brass tubes given to us from the kits to the sides of the hole. I did this so that when the ink cartridge goes in, if it breaks it wont stain the wood.

Shaping the pen

To shape the pin, I first put both pieces of wood onto the lathe again, but this time together using this attachemnt setup:

Once that was setup I was able to press a carving tool into the wood as it was spinning and slowly shave it down and give it a rounder shape. Afterwards, I sanded the newly rounded pieces to make them more comfortable to hold when using the pen.

Engraving

Assembeling the pen

To assemble the pen, I used a tool called a pen press to join the various parts together step by step. First, I pressed the head of the pen into the white side, aligning it with the thinner of the two wooden pieces. Then, on the other side of that thinner piece, I added the opening and closing mechanism and pressed them together until the black line was no longer visible. On the thicker piece of wood, I pressed down the butt of the pen along with the handle. Once all the components were secured into the wooden pieces, I inserted the ring onto the turning mechanism to separate the wood segments, then added the ink cartridge into the turning mechanism. Finally, I attached the thick piece of wood to the turning mechanism—and just like that, the pen was complete.