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:

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

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. 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.

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.

Heres the pen press pressing the pen parts together

Heres the final result of the pen (note: the pen end did change due to the piece mysteriously disapering the day after):

Engraving

For engraving my name onto the pen, I used a unqiue tool that the Fab Lab has for engraving pens. Its called a rotatry jaw chunck. Heres how the process goes:

Workflow

  1. Turn off the laser cutter before plugging in the rotatry machine. This is a crucial step as if try to plug it in when the machine is on not only will it work corectly, it could also seriously hurt you.

  2. Plug in the rotary device. On the left side of the machine, you will see a jetted out part thats the same size as the plug for the rotary machine, plug it in with the jetted out part on top. Put the machine in the center of the laser cutting bed for now.

  1. Now turn on the machine and wait a bit. The machine needs to lower it self so the laser doesnt hit the rotary machine. Once the bed is lowered and the laser has gone back and forth once or twice then you can move on to the next step

  2. Move the rotary machine to the upper left portion of the machine as far as you can. The laser when the rotary is moved in, will only go one axis so you need the machine as high and straight as possible to engrave on it.

  1. With the Machine in the corner of the bed, now you can put you pen into the rotary mechanism, to tighten or lossen the holder for the pen, simply spin the silver wheel thats on the side the desiered direction

  2. Now that you have your pen installed, go to the screen on the laser cutter and manulaly focus the laser ontop of the desired area of the pen. Auto focus does not work you have to do this manually.

  3. Now go to the computer and create the correl draw file of what you want to engrave upon your pen and send it to the epligo laser software by pressing print

  1. Now that your in the epilog laser application that has the camera view, find your design and on the left you will see values make X = 1 and Y = 4.5 while also selecting the upper left box on the grid above the values. This will look like the design is not where the pen is whatsoever in the camera view, but it is. Now make the material settings 300 for text engraving.

  1. Now press print on the software and go to the laser. Before you do any testing or cutting, modify the circumfrence of the material. To do this, go to the screen on the laser cutter and look at the bottom of the screen. You will see a value of 7. Change it to 0.5 so that the pen will spin enough when engraving to wrap the text around the pen. Since every pen is different, your going to need to test wether your X-value is correct. To do that look at the screen to the side of the laser cutter where you would normally start the cut and look at the buttons on the screen. In the lower righthand corner is a button. Press it, this will cause the laser to move over the area where it would cut. This will allow you to gauge where the laser would be engraving your design on the pen. If its a little to the left or right, go back to the computer and change the value by 0.1 for X. If the y is off center then you need to try and press the rotary more into the top. Once thats done you can move onto the next step.

Heres what one of those tests look like:

  1. Once the design is tested and seen in the desiered place, you can press the actual print button and watch your pen be engraved.

Heres my pen being engraved:

And heres my engraved pen:

Reflection

This week was a nice change of pace before I have to do my Final Project. None of the week was challenging and every step was very enjoyable to me.