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16. Wildcard Week

This week I worked on making a pen for my dad.

Weekly Objectives

  • 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.

Cutting the wood

I used the small table saw to cut the wood piece since the wood pieces I was cutting was really small.

Glue them together

After cutting the wood pieces, I used super glue to glue the wood pieces together to make a full wood block.

Then I used clamps to press them together really hard so that it would be together firmly.

Dilling Holes

Then we started to use the lathe to drill the holes.

Workflow for Lathe

  1. Wear a face shield, safety goggles and earmuffs

  2. Tie long hair up and keep jewelry in the pocket

  3. Make sure the work area is clean
  4. Make sure there is no damage to the lathe before using
  5. Familiarize yourself with the emergency stop
  6. Use the chuck key to loose the clamp of the lathe and insert the wood piece. Turn the key clockwise to tighten the jaw. Put a gap between the wood piece and the base of lathe so that the drill is able to make all the way through the wood piece Adjust the position of the wood piece and make sure the drill will drill through the center of the wood piece
  7. Tighten the clamp of the lathe using the chuck key
  8. Turn the handle on the drill until the lathe’s measure is 1”-1.5” (varies depending on the length of the wood)
  9. Unlock the body of the drill by turning the handle on the back of the drill to right.
  10. Move the drill so that it is touching the wood. 11. Check if the drill is at the mark on the wood piece
  11. Lock the body of the drill once satisfied
  12. Press the switch to turn on the lathe. The wood piece should be turning at this point.
  13. Turn the handle of the drill and be sure that the measurement on the drill is increasing
  14. Once the drill has pass through the wood piece completely, turn off the switch
  15. Once the wood piece stops spinning, unlock the body of the drill and push it out of the wood.
  16. Loosen the clamp of the lathe using the chuck key and take out the wood piece.

Video of me drilling the hole:

Here’sa picture of wood blocks with holes

Inserting Brass Tubes

After drilling the hole, it is time to insert the brass tube.

First, I tested if the hole is good enough to let the tube pass.

Then use a sand paper to scratch the surface of the brass tubes to make it rough so that It could add more fricton between the tube aand the wood to make the tubes stay in the wood.

Then apply super glue onto the tube and then insert the tube into the wood block. Let the glue dry for a while and then go to the next step

Shaping the wood

Before the next step, we need to change the setup of the lathe.

We use a stick to poke out the clamp of the lathe.

Then inserted a stick called mandrel and put on the wood blocks. Use bearings to separate the wood blocks.

Then use Carbide Turning Tools to round the wood blocksto the size that you like.

Here’s a video of me rounding the shape:

Now the wood pieces arestill rough, so I need to use sand paper to make the wood pieces smooth. I started from 500 sand paper to 2000 sand paper.

Here’s a video of me sanding:

Assembling the Pen

We used a pen compressor to assemble the part of the pen together except the top of the pen. Now it is ready to engrave.

Engraving on the Pen

Workflow for the rotatory machine

Thanks to Cooper Cumbus for teaching me how to engrave pens using laser cutter and providing me with his 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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

  8. 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.

  9. 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 that’s done you can move onto the next step.

Here’s the test 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.

Here’s my pen being engraved:

And here’s my engraved pen:

Reflection of the Week

This week was pretty fun because I can make a pen as a gift for my dad and engrave something that is unique to him as well. I was supposed to do the embroidery. However, our embroidery machine did not arrive on time so we had to switch to pens. But it was still really fun. It took us one day to finish the pen. When I finished, I was really proud of myself.

File Download

You can download my files here.

Last update: June 4, 2025