Every once in a while I need to glue another piece of wood onto my workpiece to build it up for carving, and need to “draw” onto the wood to get the location right. I’ve normally done this by profiling a super-shallow line with a v-bit, but the line can sometimes damage the wood, plus it’s hard to see when gluing.
I looked for a pen/pencil/marker holder for CNC machines but didn’t find anything with the needed precision (there was one for a marker). My solution today was the pictured 1/4" brass tube (with another 7/32" brass tube inside) with a pen insert and spring taken from a handy Amazon bag-o-springs. The blue tape just keeps it from falling out.
Has anyone come up with a better solution? I should clarify that I’d really like the router collet to hold the pen/pencil/marker straight down, so that I don’t have to calculate offsets. This worked great today to position the badge I need, but I would hope there’s something more “finished”, lol.
Well, there is the super simple pen / pencil / “whatever shape writing instrument that fits in the hole” holder that you can adjust where the writing instrument lands by adjusting it in and out until it is lined up with the spindle centerline made by @neilferreri.
I used the one below for a while, but there was a bit too much slop in it and I didn’t want to spend a little time adjusting it so I did the “smert ting” and designed my own in only 10x the time.
It’s not terrible, if you just print it a bit small and then lightly sand it until it slides without play - which is not what I did.
EDIT: Aaaaand I realized I am assuming you have a 3D printer or have access to one. If you do not, I am not sure if there is an easy or inexpensive pen / pencil holder…
For my part, I did order some parts trying to make an 8mm diameter pen holder which would allow one to directly chuck it up, but never got past some rough sketches somewhere and the initial parts order…
@MadHatter@WillAdams@David_HGP
These are all great ideas, thank you! when Carbide Motion wants to measure the bit depth, how do you do that with these fixtures? With my brass tube approach, I had to cut a wooden dowel to the same length and manually place it next to the pen tube while the bit is coming down towards the BitSetter, so that the dowel length is measured. The pen length can’t be measured because it’s spring-loaded. I’m probably missing something obvious.
I use a customized post processor for when I am using the pen holder that omits the spindle start and tool change, and the end of program is “move to the front and raise up 1 inch” . For the initialization, I just use my finger to fake the bitsetter.
Then I manually zero the pen to the surface. Since my specific pen holder doesn’t use a spring, I just set the “cut depth” to -0.10" and let it run.
I do not use Carbide Create. I use Vectric V-Carve and Inkacape. But I do use Carbide Motion.
