Mont Blanc Pen

[Daniel Duane Owen]

It seems like most of you laser engrave, so I hope I'm in the right place to ask about rotary. I have a Mont Blanc pen that I need to personalize for a customer. I've done a few of these pens in the past, with mixed results. The last one I did, I tried to rotary engrave (by that I mean the vise rotates the object and the cutter stays fixed on the y-axis) which makes more sense to me--it's round, after all--but getting it firmly anchored was tricky and tenuous. I didn't use a nose cone because I was worried the extra pressure would push the pen out of the vise. With no nose cone I had to keep manually readjusting the depth, and I ended up botching the job, a really bad thing since most of these pens retail in the $300-$600 range. So I want to get this one right on the first try.

The pen is made of a plastic composite (resin) so I can't use a diamond drag, unfortunately. Here's what it looks like:

http://www.montblanc.com/products/black_resin_gold_le_grand.10456.php?productDetail= true&tab1

The name will go on the top section, 90 degrees from the clip. I'm using a 20 degree .010 inch cutter, in a Roland EGX-360 gift engraver.

I guess I don't have a specific question except, is there a good way to rotary engrave this? Otherwise, I know I can get away with switching to XYZ axis, but I still could use any tips or suggestions you might have, especially for anchoring the pen securely. I'm very hesitant to move forward at this point. Let me know if you need more info about my setup. Thanks in advance.

[Mike Null]

You should have a pen jig that fits in your vise.

I don't think you can get a satisfactory engraving with a rotary in that material.

[Daniel Duane Owen]

I do have a pen jig, but here's the problem -- the text to be engraved is two lines, so it will stretch further around the barrel. I'm worried the top and bottom extremes are going to be much shallower than the middle. With one line I would go ahead and use the pen jig, but now I'm debating whether I should engrave one line and then reposition the pen, or do it all at once.

[Chuck Stone]

182299182300
I do it all the time on a rotary with great results. My rotary attachment is
like a lathe, so I just had someone make up two centers for me. The one in
the headstock acts just like the drive in a lathe, the tailstock becomes a
live center due to the bearings in the tailstock.

I've never really cared for using a jig. Pens are too small for me to be able
to adjust the position very well. With the rotary, I can do it with precision.
In fact, I have a line of 3D (well, 2.5D) pen blanks I make for pen turners
and they're engraved 360 degrees.

[Daniel Duane Owen]

Wow Chuck, that looks amazing... and here I am trying to make block letters look the way they're supposed to. The setup looks good too. All my rotary accessories are designed for bigger things like wine glasses, tankards, etc. I need to rig something up that will hold a pen and not get in the way.

[Dee Gallo]

Dang, Chuck, every time I see your stuff I love it!

:):):) dee :):):)

[Anthony Welch]

I'm with Dee, those are nice and nice setup you have there to do them.

[mark anizan]

If you have a Epilog there is a new rotary tool that has a small 3jaw chuck at both ends it can go down to1/8 in or smaller.I have one on order from the guy who is making them.
You can check them out at his web site laserworks of nc they are under 500 bucks about half price of Epilog.
Mark

[Chuck Stone]

Daniel .. my rotary instructions say not to do anything under 3.5" diameter. Not sure why..
but the accessories are about that size.. a rubber cone and a rubber pad. I just took them
off and I use two pieces of steel shaped to a point. They fit onto the shafts where the
rubber cone and pad went. Now I could do anything down to the smallest pen. Not hard
to use once you set it up. Biggest problem would be getting the top and bottom of the
file to match up if you engrave 360 degrees. For text, nothing to it.

Thanks for the kind words, folks .. Hey Dee, you making pens yet?

[Mike Null]

Chuck

Beautiful work!

Are we talking about apples and apples here? I gathered from Daniel's post that he was trying to do the job with a mechanical engraver. I'm assuming Chuck's response deals with laser engraving.

[Chuck Stone]

Hmm.. reading it again, I guess it could be either one. I thought 'laser' when he
said he couldn't use diamond drag and was asking about the 'rotary'. In my head
that was the rotary attachment for the laser. Maybe not!

[Mike Null]

Chuck

Your work is still incrdible but he is talking about a different machine. Notice he mentions the cutter he wants to use. In his example the jig is fixed and the tool moves.

Daniel

See if you can get a replacement cap in case you run into bad luck. A dealer should be able to provide them though I don't know the cost. See if you can find a cheap substitute to practice on. You can get a delrin nose cone. You might also want to try blue painters tape or clear packing tape to prevent the nose cone from scratching the pen. If you don't use the nose cone then, as you've discovered, you won't be able to regulate depth.

[Larry Bratton]

If you have a Epilog there is a new rotary tool that has a small 3jaw chuck at both ends it can go down to1/8 in or smaller.I have one on order from the guy who is making them.
You can check them out at his web site laserworks of nc they are under 500 bucks about half price of Epilog.
Mark
That is a great looking setup for the rotary attachment. Good price too! There is a video on Ebay of it and shows $469 as a buy now price.

[Chuck Stone]

Chuck

Your work is still incrdible but he is talking about a different machine. Notice he mentions the cutter he wants to use. In his example the jig is fixed and the tool moves.

Ah .. a closed mouth gathers no foot.. :o

[Mike Null]

Chuck

I'd be interested in a "how to" from an engraving perspective on your pens. That black and silver is magnificent.

[Chuck Stone]

Mike .. pretty straightforward, really. I turned an aluminum blank on the lathe.
I think it was either 6062 or maybe 6063, I forget which, but it cut with
woodworking tools and patience.
Sprayed with Cermark and ran the file on the rotary attachment.

I have two cones for the rotary; I replaced the rubber pads with the cones.
They act as a live and a dead center. The cones are steel, turned on a
metal lathe. I could use bushings, but the cone shape allows me to do any
size pen. They're mounted where the rubber pads were.

As for the image, I have several patterns I run, and they're all raster (gasp!)
I make them in Photoshop and most of the time I do these on maple pen blanks.
Turn the blank to size, measure and multiply the diameter x pi to get you file
height. Measure the length and use these numbers in your program to create
your file.

On aluminum I run pretty slow. But on wood, it goes fairly fast. Biggest problem
on wood is not burning right through the blanks. I have piles of rejects.

The only 'problem' I run into is making sure the pattern continues seamlessly.
That involves tweaking the file so that the top of the file matches the bottom
exactly. You'll get some rejects there, too. It helped to open the rotary and
use some black tape to cut down the size of the slot in the disc. This is what
finds 'home' position. The smaller the slot, the more repeatable your positioning
can be. (at least I think so.. I got a lot of 'short' files before I did that)

[Mike Null]

I am amazed that you can make Cermark look that good. Thanks for telling us about your method. I am in awe.

BTW, you know they have two new colors--copper and pearl white.

[mark anizan]

Larry
Mine should be here sometime next week and I will give it a workout doing inlays on some of my pens. I will let you know how it performs.
Mark

[Chuck Stone]

I am amazed that you can make Cermark look that good. Thanks for telling us about your method. I am in awe.

BTW, you know they have two new colors--copper and pearl white.

Mostly I do woods and resins, but I wanted to try the Cermark and Thermark on aluminum.
Don't be too amazed .. the Cermark faded in a couple of weeks. turned gray/green/tan.

Next I want to turn a little oversized, anodize, engrave it, then anodize and dye it
black (so now the low spots are black) then sand off the highlights and bring it back
to polished silver.
Too many possibilities.. not enough time!

[Dee Gallo]

Chuck, you can anodize stuff??? What CAN'T you do?

[Chuck Stone]

Chuck, you can anodize stuff??? What CAN'T you do?

uh .. apparently I can't anodize!
I set up a little station at home but it didn't work so well.
Seemed simple. .. a small power supply (12v battery charger)
aluminum wire, some sulfuric acid and some dyes. But I didn't get
the results I was after. Then I found out I used the wrong dyes..
I'm not sure the anodizing took either. But I never got back to it
to try again.. too many other things going on and I needed my
kitchen back. After all, that's my mold casting station.

[Mike Null]

Chuck

Word is that Thermark is better for aluminum. I just quit doing aluminum and confine my work to Cermark on steel and SS.

Here in St. Louis there are a number of shops doing anodizing. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find one in your area who would work with you.

[Chuck Stone]

Yeah.. I had some trouble so I bought the Thermark too but never
quite got it right. Then other things got in the way. It's still on my
list of things to do, just a matter of getting back to it.
I found someone to do anodizing, but on such small parts and small
quantity they were giving me phone numbers. I'll get back to it
at some point..

[Dan Hintz]

William,

Your posts are against the site's TOS... if you want to advertise your company and products, send an email/PM to Keith Outten and he can fill you in on pricing for advertising here.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Chuck, those pens look great!

What I don't understand about that rotary - with my rotary (which looks similar) I would hit the rotary case if I try to focus on things with such a small diameter. The cones could be replaced, but that wouldn't elevate things - or do I understand something wrong ?

[Dan Hintz]

Andrea,

I had the same question when I first started, and I was forced to do some serious acrobatics to get it to work (and even then it wasn't reliable). The trick (at least on the ULS) was to create a dot at 0P somewhere over the pen at a focal height that moves the table down far enough for the lens carriage to clear the rotary. After that, don't move the carriage (an option on the ULS, Epilogs may or may not have such an option), laser your design as normal at the proper focal height (which moves the table up), followed by another dot at 0P that moves the table down again. Sequencing is done via colors...

[Chuck Stone]

Andrea.. one of the first things I did was to remove the cover on the rotary attachment.
That gave me a little more room to work. The rotary now sits back on top of the left hand
ruler, so I have a 'waste blank' to test on first. Might just be a brass tube with tape on it
so I can test the beam placement. I also have a file with an equal amount of white space
at each end that I'll test with.. so when I get equal blank space on each end of the
tape/tube, I know I'm centered on the X axis.

I find with that placement I can get the focal point down to just about nothing and still
not have the head crash into the left rail. "Home" position brings the head to within 1/4"
of the large wheel, but never touches it. And with the box gone, there's more room.
Also made some 3/4 cones for holding the tubes. I just put a point on them (on the lathe)
and drilled holes in the back so that the shafts on the head and tailstock fit inside them.
Much easier to hold tubes that way.

It ain't pretty, but it works for me!

[Dan Hintz]

Chuck,

I considered replacing the cover on mine with something custom, but just removing it altogether may be the ticket.

[Chuck Stone]

Removing it works fine.. just remember to dust it out well every so often.
I took a couple of pics to show how it fits. You can see that part of the
rotary attachment is under the left side frame of the machine, but with
no box attached, there's a lot of room to move it backwards so the head
doesn't crash into anything. One thing I hated about this rotary.. when
I set it up with the box on it, the head CAN crash into the box!

[Real Mercier]

I do some pens on the Epilog. I also use the rotary attachment. The typical pen mandrel fits very nicely on the attachment. For this setup, with the rotary in place, I lower the table, then you set "X/Y Off" hit Go and you can move the laser head to the center of the pen blank, the Y axis will be fixed. I use the red dot pointer to do this. Then "Set Home". Then I focus normally. When you send your artwork, make sure in the Epilog driver you have the "Center-Center" option selected. Then Laser. When done the head returns to the position you set as home.

Hope that helps.

Real Mercier

[Andrea Weissenseel]

Thanks Chuck and Dan :)

I have an option in my driver to autofocus by pen, that should be it. There is a new driver for my spirit, which can defocus by pen - unfortunately it's not available for XP :(

Chuck, the pictures made it clear

[Chuck Stone]

Andrea.. I think I tried the Auto Focus the first day.. that was the last time.
It's fast and easy to focus manually on my machine (don't know about others)
and often I don't want to focus right at the surface anyway. So I just got
into the habit of manual focus and don't even think about it.

[Glen Monaghan]

If you have a Epilog there is a new rotary tool that has a small 3jaw chuck at both ends it can go down to1/8 in or smaller.I have one on order from the guy who is making them.
You can check them out at his web site laserworks of nc they are under 500 bucks about half price of Epilog.
Mark

I ordered one of these this same guy was offering on ebay. He was supposed to ship within a week but instead he kept coming up with a new excuse each week and a promise to ship the next week. When I saw that he got good feedback from another buyer who supposedly picked up a rotary the day before he was supposed to ship to me, Blasi actually told me the "buyer" was a friend who put in a fake bid to prevent selling at a loss. I called that guy up and confirmed that he doesn't even have a laser engraver and knew nothing about the rotary (once he understood my line of questioning, he claimed that he bought the rotary for his 11 year old nephew who uses his Epilog laser engraver to mark items for a local company...)

Blasi quit answering emails and his phone goes straight to voice mail, which is full and disconnects you. When I filed a complaint with ebay, they gave him a week to respond and he did nothing the entire time, finally posting an electronic tracking number. Two weeks later, the USPS confirmed he still hadn't shipped, so ebay ruled against him and refunded my $.

He did the same thing with another buyer. Ebay appears to have finally shut him down there.

Wish I'd seen his website before I got involved because it's pretty clear that Laserworks NC is not a real company, just a website the guy put up trying to look legitimate but, if you pay attention, there are several indications that it's just a guy trying to put on the look. I can't say whether he's actually just a bad business man or truly a bad scammer but, either way, he's been taking people's money and not delivering any product.

-Glen

[Glen Monaghan]

Larry
Mine should be here sometime next week and I will give it a workout doing inlays on some of my pens. I will let you know how it performs.
Mark

Mark, it's been about three months... Did you ever receive a rotary from William Blasi/Laserworks NC?

[Dan Hintz]

I ordered one of these this same guy was offering on ebay. He was supposed to ship within a week but instead he kept coming up with a new excuse each week and a promise to ship the next week. When I saw that he got good feedback from another buyer who supposedly picked up a rotary the day before he was supposed to ship to me, Blasi actually told me the "buyer" was a friend who put in a fake bid to prevent selling at a loss. I called that guy up and confirmed that he doesn't even have a laser engraver and knew nothing about the rotary (once he understood my line of questioning, he claimed that he bought the rotary for his 11 year old nephew who uses his Epilog laser engraver to mark items for a local company...)

Blasi quit answering emails and his phone goes straight to voice mail, which is full and disconnects you. When I filed a complaint with ebay, they gave him a week to respond and he did nothing the entire time, finally posting an electronic tracking number. Two weeks later, the USPS confirmed he still hadn't shipped, so ebay ruled against him and refunded my $.

He did the same thing with another buyer. Ebay appears to have finally shut him down there.

Wish I'd seen his website before I got involved because it's pretty clear that Laserworks NC is not a real company, just a website the guy put up trying to look legitimate but, if you pay attention, there are several indications that it's just a guy trying to put on the look. I can't say whether he's actually just a bad business man or truly a bad scammer but, either way, he's been taking people's money and not delivering any product.

-Glen
Good info to know, Glen... if you notice an earlier post by me in this thread, he was posting here a week or two ago pushing his website and products (against the site's TOS). If he's unable to provide the promised products and admits to using shills in his transactions, that's something members should be aware of before ordering.

EDIT: I'm also not a fan of any company where the payment is requested in the owner's name and not the company's... that says it's either not a registered company (i.e., filed with the county/state), or someone is trying to sidestep taxes on income. This also reduces potential legal recourse should things go south.

[Martin Boekers]

Wow! First I ever heard of one admiting he had falsified an auction!

Must be nice to be 11 years old and hve you own laser!:rolleyes:

One thing to remember even if the guy was legit, if his product was not endorsed by Epilog,
their product could void a warranty from Epilog. So think alot before buying aftermarket
products.