Too Long In The Works!

[dougscott]

I spent almost two weeks on this pen -- I kept tweaking and reworking it until I was happy with the result. A bulb filler, the barrel is Sterling silver, the cap and trim vintage cebloplast. The section and clip are nickel silver and the nib is a Bock 5mm. Meanwhile, the shop floor is littered with the shafts of broken teeny tiny end mills and ruined Sterling. If adversity is a learning experience, I think I just picked up a Ph.D.!

 

Thanks for looking!

Doug

[Ted A]

Your PHD thesis is marvelous.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Ted A

[richardandtracy]

It does look nice.

 

I suspect that if you are going to do more of these, it might be better to invest in a single point thread mill. These produce a V groove, but are much more robust and can be used at moderate feed rates (and have the additional use of cutting threads of multiple pitches with the correct program). The program will have to be changed to cut on the side of the mill rather than plunge vertically into the work. though.

 

In acrylic I found that with a 0.3mm dia end mill and a doc of 0.2mm, spindle speed of 20000rpm, the maximum feed rate was 50mm/min. I would guess silver would be 10mm/min or so. How good was my guess?

 

Keep up the amazing work, though.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[dougscott]

It does look nice.

 

I suspect that if you are going to do more of these, it might be better to invest in a single point thread mill. These produce a V groove, but are much more robust and can be used at moderate feed rates (and have the additional use of cutting threads of multiple pitches with the correct program). The program will have to be changed to cut on the side of the mill rather than plunge vertically into the work. though.

 

In acrylic I found that with a 0.3mm dia end mill and a doc of 0.2mm, spindle speed of 20000rpm, the maximum feed rate was 50mm/min. I would guess silver would be 10mm/min or so. How good was my guess?

 

Keep up the amazing work, though.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

 

I was a little quicker than that -- .5cm/minute. I like the idea of a V since I'm not going very deep (0.0002") -- I used an end mill but in in retrospect, I might better have used a ball end. But, since I have no intention of repeating it soon.....

 

Thanks for the kind words!

[unclepoop]

Nice looking pen, great job.

[mmg122]

Dougscott...beautiful pen! Very nice choice of materials. Well done.