Pen holder for 3018 PRO CNC

thingiverse

Having recently acquired a SainSmart 3018 PRO CNC, I was looking for other things I could do with it besides make huge piles of sawdust, splinters and cut and burn things. One of my sideline hobbies is restoring old telegraph keys and certain models of these have gold painted artwork on them that is difficult for me to duplicate reliably by hand. So, I thought why not have the CNC draw it? I decided to make a pen holder attachment that would quickly and easily attach to the exterior dimensions of the spindle holder and hold a paint pen that has an 11mm diameter. The pen I used for this was a "MARVY Deco Color" Extra Fine Liquid Gold. The spindle is removable from the CNC, but I didn't want to wear out the clamping hardware by constantly removing the spindle each time I wanted to use it as a paint pen plotter, so that was the reason for making something that slips over the clamping mechanism. View the photos to see my design. It works great for me. The holder uses M2.5 hardware, but you can use whatever you like, including 2-sided tape if you want to make it stay on better. I did end up using a thin piece of 2 sided tape on the barrel of the pen to keep it from sliding up in the holder while setting the Z height on the CNC. A binder clip can be used to hold the pen in the holder if you have difficulty with the screw keeping a grip. There is a video of this attachment in action during a test run on a plain piece of paper posted to my Facebook group page "Rob's Hobbies on Etsy." Here's a link if you don't want to search for it: https://www.facebook.com/RobsHobbiesOnEtsy/videos/224354802173164/ If you found this useful, please donate what you think it is worth to my paypal.me. Help cover the time of design. Thanks, Enjoy!