Pen making and Engraving using the GF

[pensman]

Hi all, Im a newbie to GF. Finally unboxed my GF+ today and did my first print. Cor, its good! I need some help/advice please. I make hand turned pens and use both acrylic and woods to make them. Is there anyone who can give me a bit of advice on laying the pen on the crumb tray to get the barrel engraved. Is anyone using a jig? All help most gratefully received…Stormtrooper, fire up your laser!!!

[mrinken]

Yes - search the forums for jigs. There are many people here who’ve made jigs for pencils and other multi-engrave operations to keep things in place.

Depending on the thickness of the pen, you may need to remove the crumb tray and build a jig to hold the pens at the correct height. This is very doable, especially if you’re turning pens, you obviously have access to some woodworking tools. You can also use the GF to make these!

A quick search of the forums and you’ll be on your way - here’s 2 good posts.

Various Height Bed Risers

I was engraving some thicker objects that were too thick to place on the honeycomb. After a couple of successes with using random objects as risers, I decided to get all scientific on it. After measuring a riser surface height of 1.362", I created three boxes; one full height riser and two that are below the normal honeycomb height by fixed amounts. Now ? If I measure a material thickness greater than 0.5", I just grab a riser, subtract the amount shown on the side from the material’s thickn…

Jig for Engraving Multiple Pencils: Repeatable positioning

I’ve been thinking about the whole alignment thing but haven’t gotten to the point where I had something to test. I won an attendance prize the other day at a luncheon and came home with a beautiful stationery desk set, pastel colors, with 12 pencils that had sayings on them. They are round. Here is what they ended up looking like: [image] Here’s how I got there: [image] I cut a flat piece of cardboard that had two factory edges which I used as the main reference, then used by acrylic frami…

[dklgood]

Welcome to the forum.

There are several pen makers here in the forum. If you search the forum for “pen” you will find some great inspiration. Here is an old post which includes a link to a jig. Pen Holder for engraving

[pensman]

Thanks. Very much appreciate your response (I’ll take all the help I can get. Love the GF+……and it’s only been up and running for five hours! Thanks again. G