[chola]

G'day,

Well after many, many hours (see: enough to get threats about not being at the dinner table on time!) of research, I have finally CNC'cd my mini lathe and successfully made some parts!!! Now I know how Tom Hanks felt when he 'created' fire in Castaway!

Now I would like to have a go at making some pens out of metal. Searching the WWW retuns a vast amount of info on making wood pens, but I 've not found anything for alloy, steel, brass etc.

Has anyone done this? The concept is obviously very simple, but to be able to see some finished product and get some hints and tips would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Colin

[NEATman]

Chola-
I made a metal mechanical pencil for a friend a couple years ago. Attached is a pic. I made it from stainless steel. It is made from a pentel pencil with a retractable tip. This is an important point (pun intended...) as he keeps this pencil in his front pocket. He kept breaking the plastic bodied pencils in half when he sat down. This one won't break anytime soon.
It's not fancy; I made it on a manual lathe, and just made it to the original dimensions of the plastic housing. I keep hoping to make a new one for myself one of these days, and engrave it on my CNC mill.

NEATman

[chola]

Hey NEATman,

Very nice.

This is sort of what I had in mind. I was thinking about buying a 'cheap' pen, performing some surgery and remove the workings and make a new 'shell' for it. Later I would like to get some of those pen kits that are all over the internet, but would like to test the concept first.

Great job on the smooth taper considering it was done by hand! Did you seal / lacquer it pencil in any way?

Chola

[NEATman]

Chola-
Thanks - It was a fun experiment. All I did was freehand it in the lathe, then file the contour, polish with sandpaper, and some buffing on a buffing wheel. That's why I prefer stainless, no painting or finishing required, and unless you loose it, you only have to make it once.

I've finished a "prototype" pocket tape measure in aluminum, now I just need a few free hours to make one in stainless.

Neatman

[chola]

Wow, how cool is that!! I am constantly amazed at what people are making on these machines.

I mainly make 1/8 to 1/12 scale model car parts (lathe only at this stage), yet to build a gantry style milling machine. While it is fun to make these parts, it would be nice to actually make something practical - like the pen. I have only ever made my model parts out of alloy, so any hints & tips for turning steel are welcom.

[epineh]

Might be wandering off topic a bit, but I always wanted to make a pen out of something like a semi precious gemstone, I'm thinking agate, as you menitoned, use an existing pen for the workings. Probably manual at first, but a cnc controlled diamond wheel/lapping setup might make a cool project.

Russell.

[chola]

Hi Russell,

Semi precious gemstone pen would be nice too - hadn't even though of that. Maybe even a combination of s/steel with some nice stone bands along the barrell?

Yes I thought the easiest way would be to buy a cheap (Parker style???) pen and re-do the barrell.

Being a bit new to this, how would I go about machining semi-precious stone? More to the point, what type of places sell it - some resources are limited in Australia!

I would actually like to machine something as a gift for my (small-but-effective, long-suffering) wife, so thanks thanks for the inspiration and keep 'em comin'!!

Colin

[NEATman]

Chola-
Have you seen the pen kits that are available for woodworking? They are very affordable, and use a cross style refil. It may be easiest to start with one of these kits. I have seen many people use Corrian or other plastics.

http://www.woodcraft.com/depts.aspx?...yword=pen_kits

Never seen a stone pen, that would be quite a challenge!
Neatman

[chola]

Hey,

NEATman, thanks for the link, some very nice pens there.

Epineh, here is a link I found for pens made of stone

http://www.go-authentic.com/pens/tru...ntain-pen.html

These look pretty hard-core but some good ideas.

Thanks all.

[epineh]

Nice pens Chola, they look a bit like a marbalised plastic type stuff I have heard of, you can buy the blanks to suit pen making and use the kits that Neatman mentioned, I dunno if that is what they have used on those pens, looks like it. Tru stone sounds like a man made kinda thing...

As for the raw material, Agate creek in Queensland is one of the best sources of quality agate in the world, bit of a drive for most people though, but I am sure you could source some without too much trouble in Queensland.

Russell.

[epineh]

Was a bit rushed on the last post, missed your question on how to machine the agate, basically forget using your lathe, as to "cut" gemstone material you need to use diamond "laps" with water, the slurry that is a result is really bad news for bearings, slides etc. Agate is particularly known to be "tough" to cut, even though it is quartz, which isn't high on the hardness scale.

I facet semi precious gemstones on a dedicated faceting machine, but it wouldn't really be of any use to make pens with, the length of the material to cut would need a lathe type of setup, but with some kind of diamond wheel instead of a tool, might give it a bit more thought, and to keep things relevant, I will think of how to cnc such a beast.

Russell.

[BobWarfield]

This is something I'd like to try, making pens. My CNC Lathe isn't yet up and running, but its on my list as one of the first projects. I've been playing around in Rhino to see what kind of design might be fun:



I like this fellow's machine made pens and other goodies:

http://www.elishewitzknives.com/default.asp

Best,

BW

[fullthrottle]

Chola-
I made a metal mechanical pencil for a friend a couple years ago. Attached is a pic. I made it from stainless steel. It is made from a pentel pencil with a retractable tip. This is an important point (pun intended...) as he keeps this pencil in his front pocket. He kept breaking the plastic bodied pencils in half when he sat down. This one won't break anytime soon.
It's not fancy; I made it on a manual lathe, and just made it to the original dimensions of the plastic housing. I keep hoping to make a new one for myself one of these days, and engrave it on my CNC mill.

NEATman

thats cool as **** man!!!!!


this coming from a guy ho isnt a machinist.

[chola]

BobWarfield - Nice CAD design - that's the sort of thing I had in mind for a first go - nice and simple but wtill with a few interesting highlights. Had a look at your link - amazing what some people come up with - very expensive but you can't argue with the end result!

Epineh - Thanks for the info. You're not wrong about a bit of a drive to Agate Creek (I'm on the Gold Coast). I found a few websites that sell Agate, beautiful patterns, would certainly make a very interesting and unique pen. It is something I would like to try later on, but I think I need to 'bugger up' a few metal ones first! I understand what you are saying about the grinding action rather than cutting. For my own interest, would a 'normal' drill bit go through this, or do you think a more specialised one would be needed? Sorry if that's one of those 'duh' questions, never had anything to do with 'stone' before!

Hey fullthrottle - welcome!

Thanks for all the info.



Colin

[chola]

Here is a thought - I hope the guy who made this doesn't mind me using this pic - this is what I call a beautiful pen (if the pic comes out!)

[Torchhead]

Here is a technical pencil in SS. The guts are a .5mm mechanical pencil (Pentel). Turned on a 12 X 36 manual. Lots of operations. Takes a long time to go from blank to pencil. One of the things that got me back into CNC is that when I tried to have this pencil engraved nobody would touch it! I had to build my own engraver with a rotary axis. I have one I made for myself and I still use it everyday. It's the only pencil I have managed to keep for 4 years and not break or leave somewhere.

I have the dimensioned drawings somewhere............

Tom Caudle
www.CandCNC.com

[chola]

Hi torchhead,

Very nice. The rotary axis is something I am also interested in when I build my milling machine - for the engraving among other things.. Any hints on the setup much appreciated. Would also be good to get the dimensions next time you find them. I know each pen / pencil will be different but again I imagine the concept is the same.

How is the pencil for weight? Not too top / bottom heavy?

Thanks.

COlin

[epineh]

For my own interest, would a 'normal' drill bit go through this, or do you think a more specialised one would be needed? Sorry if that's one of those 'duh' questions, never had anything to do with 'stone' before!

Colin

Nup its not a duh question, in fact it is a pretty common in lapidary circles, almost like power supply questions in CNC.

To drill gemstone material the most common approach is to use something like piano wire, with a flat end and whatever diameter you want the hole, in a diamond powder/water slurry, with the material you are drilling immersed in the slurry, use some kind of drill. Some countries still do this by hand, how do you spell cheap labour ?

Before you start thinking all of this diamond powder is gonna add up to an expensive exercise, I have bought a 20 caret vial of the stuff for around $25.00 in the past.

As an aside to this, if you have any old worn out holesaws, grind the teeth completely off so it is flat on the "cutting" surface and use this method to cut holes in glass... good clean fun!!! Oh yeah the usual warnings about bad for your health and so on, that goes for the leftover's from drilling gemstone's, not the best stuff to put on your toast in the morning...

I'm with you though, it sounds like a project to try later on.

Russell.

[Torchhead]

Hi torchhead,

Very nice. The rotary axis is something I am also interested in when I build my milling machine - for the engraving among other things.. Any hints on the setup much appreciated. Would also be good to get the dimensions next time you find them. I know each pen / pencil will be different but again I imagine the concept is the same.

How is the pencil for weight? Not too top / bottom heavy?

Thanks.

COlin

The weight of the pencil takes getting used to. It is balanced about the 1/3 point up (putting more weight on the part you grip). After you use one for a while you will have a hard time going back to the winpy plastic mechanical pencils. Besides, it's bullet resistant and you can change the guts out for less than 5 bucks. I used a 4 inch rotary table and tailstock (Sherline stepper version). The little 17 frame stepper they supply will spin the table but I forgot to reset my current limit from the 4A I had on the regular Y axis motor and the blue smoke excaped from the motor. I replaced it with a 23 frame stepper and used it for several months.

Rather than hassle with rotary setup and a separate axis, I would just connect my Y axis stepper output to the rotary table and treat it as Y on my drawings in CorelDraw. I had to recalculate the steps per unit based on the gearing of the rotary table but also by Pi times diameter to get the actual surface area of the pencil (circumference). Since I used pretty much standard dimensions (blanks) it wasn't too hard.

It was that exercise in engraving SS that made me realize the vaule of a floating head in my engraver!

[chola]

Thanks everyone for all the info and ideas. You can be sure once I have made a pen I will post pics for all to critique!

In the meantime, if anyone has any other pics or suggestions, feel free to let me know, ideas always welcome.