Floating pen holder

[jrc347]

Has anyone made a floating pen holder for their torchmate? I am interested in making one and would like to see some different ideas on it. Would it be easier to mount it directly to the machine torch or to the gantry? Any ideas would be great.

[jrc347]

Also 1 more question. Is it possible to use the torchmate height control to do a simple up and down move to take the pen off the material when moving from one cut to the other?

[Mike@Torchmate]

Originally Posted by jrc347 Also 1 more question. Is it possible to use the torchmate height control to do a simple up and down move to take the pen off the material when moving from one cut to the other?

The height control Automatically retracts in between cuts, you will have to set the torch to bottom out in the lifter station travel so that the pen floats and has enough up travel and down travel. I might recommend mounting it to the torch because it is giving you a nice round body to mount to.

[Shane.Warnick]

What type of pen are you wanting to mount? I would think that a holder for an inexpensive pen could be made that would house the pen, with the top mounted directly to the torch, and a spring could be inserted between the end of the pen and the housing. You could then use up / down commands to lower the pen down to the material and pick it up between line segments, and the springs could be adjusted to control pressure between the pen and material. The hardest thing would be some type of travel limiter so the pen would not fall out of the holder when moving between lines. I also wouldn't think it would be that hard to make a housing out of aluminum to house a good refill for a pen, and slide up into itself, so it could house the spring, limit travel, not have a lot of endplay, and be easy to maintain. The longer the overlap of the two housings, and good tolerances between the two should keep the endplay down to a minimum. It would also make it easy to change colors. If you dont have a lathe or mill, pen kits are available online for a very reasonable price.

[Weldtutor]

Originally Posted by jrc347 Has anyone made a floating pen holder

See post #160 at this link for a picture & DXF drawing of a pen holder idea that should work for any CNC plasma machines.

A simple modification would allow the pen to lift as the torch retracts.

[jseiler]

how about this?

YouTube - Thunderbird by Sharpie

YouTube - Thunderbird by Sharpie

it's just a hole to fit a sharpie with a lead weight on the top for pressure.

John