Searched but didn’t find anything so if it has been address, please just head me in the right direction.
My son has a lathe and likes to turn wooden fountain and ball point pens. I was wondering if anyone has been able to use a McEngraver to engrave such an object. Any advise would be great.
Thanks
Engraving or vcarving on round objects is hard. You basically have to set the depth deep enough to get the carve on the sides and yet with the very thin part left of a turned pen you might cut through to the brass tube. If you want to try then use a 15 degree and learn how much to limit the depth so you dont cut through to the brass underneath. The lettering will need to be very small because of the curvature of the pen body. Good Luck. Post if you are successful. I would get some unfinished pieces because you are likely to ruin a finished pen. The pen should be turned to final diameter to experiment with. The next issue will be holding down the pen without damaging it. Maybe make a jig that the piece will be jammed into with some double sided tape and/or painters tape and super glue to keep it from rotating while carving. There is a lot of torque while cutting the wood.
The reason to do it on unfinished blanks is he can put it back on the lathe and sand and apply finish. Then when he presses the pens together he can orient the carving as he likes.
You will never know unless you try it.
You will have to make a 3d toolpath to match the radius of the turned object.
If the piece you want to engrave has multiple diameters, then you will have to account for that in your 3d tool path.
The easiest way to make this work will be to use the lathe to get a precise cylinder in the area you want to engrave. IE a consistent cylinder for 1" of the pen. Make that cylinder have a .25 diameter (or some known size). Then create a matching-size cylinder in CC and engrave it on the cylinder.
I hope this makes sense.
Or, you could use an attached laser to burn text into the almost finished pen barrel.
Not sure if this might work for you, but Estlcam has a surface scanning option that’s interesting:
Wow! Thanks everyone. Lot of ideas and things to think about. Have a lot to try out and see if I can make something work.
Thanks again!
I agree with using a laser to engrave the pens. Here are some photos (different flash settings for the photos) of the first three I engraved with my Shapeoko attached laser.
I could not find “mcengraver” on the net, so my opinion may be irrelevant, but you could always buy a rotary axis for your CNC.
The Shapeoko does not have any way to run a 4th axis. To get a 4th axis you have to go up in price substantially.
Just because I don’t know the name of the tool “McEtcher” is no reason to not find it…as in duh on me. 
Looks like I may have to go to a laser if it is something my son really wants to see happen. Time will tell, but thanks to all for their input.
@Frank246 I meant no offense. I have the mcetcher diamond drags. I did not realize that you were referring to them in your post. My apologies.
@gdon_2003 I may well be mistaken. (It would not be the first time. 
) However, it looks like you could run a rotary on a Shapeoko in the same way as I do on my CNC. I disconnect the y axis motors and plug one of the cables into the rotary. The router can then move in X and Z as usual. The Y signals rotate the rotary. It may well depend on what CAM software you are using, too. I am using VCarvePro and it accommodates rotary projects. It really just “fakes” the Y axis movements.
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
