pyrography

Re: pyrography

Richard Allen

>Hi John

I am not much on wood burning. I like the look and all, just that I am not any good at it. Here is what I do about the heat.

Work at an angle so that the tip of the pen is above my fingers. This helps a lot but the heat still gets to the pen. The fact that you say the cork handles are cooler suggest to me that you are already doing this.

The other thing I do is have one of them 2 burner units. They only let you heat one pen at a time. So while the hot pen is cooling I use the other pen. This can stretch out my time a lot. Still, as the session goes on the length of time before the cooled pen is to hot to use gets shorter and shorter.

I have not used this but I have seen a structured foam overlay for the pen which would appear to keep the hot pen away from your fingers. I would be concerned that there would be a loss of control with this. It isn't like I have much control anyway.

Keep cool

Richard

Re: pyrography *LINK*

-e-

>john,

i don't have any heat problems with the pens i use, and can use them for hours at a stretch.

my pens and controller come from carver tools (optima brand-link below). Talk to Pat (owner/engineer); he'll provide more information than you even request.

my understanding is that pen-heat comes from poor engineering--heat generated from the resistence in bad contacts and conduction.

i don't know if you can tell from my work, but i use my burning tools a lot. having a well-engineered tool is the only way i could do the branding or extensive burning. i have some detail master and razortip pens, but they heat up and i use then sparingly.

hope thiis helps...email if you need further info.

e


Pat @ carvertools

Re: pyrography

John Lucas

>Thanks for the link. I suspected that the joints I was making were part of what was causing the heat. I could tell when I used cheap RCA terminals. They really got hot so I purchased high quality ones and that part of the pen gets warm but not hot.

Re: pyrography

Phil Joines, Krum, Tx

>John,

I've see, bit don't remember where, home made pens with an aluminum outer tube that was 1/8 larger than the pen it'self. It was secured to the body with 3 thin insulating strips. The air space between the tube and body reduced the heat transfer and allowed some air flow.

Re: pyrography

Don Evans

>Hey John;

I understand your problem and here is what I did.

Going with the fact that to me, my comfort is more important than making the pen last a life time, I did this:

Had an old rubber type water hose that I saved, so cut 4 or 5 inches of it, sliced it up the center lenght wise. Wrapped it around the pen to determine the over lap and cut it again removing the excess.

Then just wrapped it with black electrician tape half way up from business end, letting the slit open from that point on up to let out heat.

Works great and hand never gets warm.

Another advantage this gave is larger diameter so it doesn't have a tendency to give writers cramp anymore.

Another tip if you have replaceable tips like i do (I like them and ain't changing) is to get a pair of pliers at jewelry supply that will put a slight bend in the tip prongs. These pliers have one jaw that is round and the other is cupped so the round one goes down inside it. Putting a slight bend in the tip where it goes into handle makes for an always tight connection. This can be done with long nose also but not as consistant.

Don

Re: pyrography

John Lucas

>Thanks Don

I have a woodburning project coming up and I'm going to try several things. John

Re: pyrography

Pat Lamusga

>Alumuminum CONDUCTS heat (like crazy), and a small air gap isn't going to cool it off much (especially when you have those spacer rings in between the inner and outter barrels).

Basically, you need a pyrography pen body that is built from the ground up to not conduct heat to your hand (i.e.: not made of metal, and comes with some sort of natural heat shielding material).

You also have to think of wire tip type pyrography tools (a very low voltage, high amperge type of power is used) as a controlled dead short. The thing you have to control when designing one, is where the "dead short" has the biggest "bottleneck" at (should be at the end of the pen tip), otherwise you run into things like thermal run-away (your cord/jacks melt). This is why replacible wire tip tools (big bottlneck) generally don't work well. At 1.5vac max, any small and/or loose connection just arcs and heats up.