# Light Sabre Entry & Maglev pen stand.



## BradG (Sep 15, 2015)

Hey guys
Figured id share my SE entry here 

The pens body & lid were made from aluminium bar, along with the controls which protude acting as a roll stop. The roll stop on the lid I turned from brass as I thought the colour was a nice subtle touch.

The dot matrix pattern going around the lid was a little challenging. as I don't have a rotary table or indexing setup I decided to etch the pattern. Because of the shape of the lid, it would have been very difficult to protect the remainder of lid while going through the etching process. Because of this I decided to etch the aluminium bar before doing any machining, and then turning the lid around the etched piece.

I didn't want to use any colouring on the etched pattern out of fear it would have looked a little tacky... so I skipped desmutting the piece after etching and heated it with a blow torch in the hope it would bake the smut onto the surface, which it seems to of nicely. This gave the etch a well handled & used look.

The black infill you can see in the lines was airbrushed on, again to simulate a used look. Still looks like paint in my opinion rather than a buildup of dirt in the creases, but guess I need to work on my Airbrushing technique.








First test of the light effect! trying to fit two LR44 batteries into a pen lid is a tight squeeze! let alone trying to fit an LED or other light source in there too.
My solution was to mount an ultra bright LED into the end of the Acrylic rod which push fits into the end. The legs of the LED which protude from the Acrylic were formed into the shape of sprung contacts. one which goes straight down to the positive side of the battery, and the other curved around to the side of the acrylic to make contact with the metal of the pens body which acts as the ground, just how a flashlight is designed.

The two batteries can be removed and replaced with a rare earth magnet so that this pen will levitate on my Maglev display stand, or simply left out if you are intending on using it as a carry pen. In the end of the cap, not pictured (sorry) You will find a terminal machine from brass which covers the top of the battery and accepts the connection from the LED.






For the finishing touches I airbrushed the grips with Acrylic enamel and left to cure for 48 hours. Pretty durable but likely to scratch if man handled. Anodising them would be a better approach.

















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Maglev Pen Stand
I will start off by saying this was nearly thrown at the wall a couple of times and caused a little worry if I would manage to finish it on time for the competition!

Probably the largest piece of aluminium I have purchased. Quite a lump!





All groves were cut into the piece with a parting tool, and then the piece was hollowed out an inch deep to accommodate the printed circuit board I made.






I drilled a hole through the side for the supporting arm, and as a cable entry point to the base. five cores run through the arm. the other two wires protuding are for the power supply. 7.5V 1A






Here you can see the base is flipped over which reveals where the circuit board is hidden. inside here is three buttons for adjusting the power of the electromagnet to accommodate objects of different weight upto around 80 grams. at this stage bottles and things are propping it up as the supporting arm is not yet fixed in place. If you look closely, you can see there is two magnets levitating there with quite an impressive air gap.






The top was machined from aluminium scaffolding, and the end pieces from solid bar. I wish I photographed the bottom end cap as that was quite intricate. the inside profile was made to cause the bottom cap to wrap around the height of the electromagnet to act as a heat sink. the endplug is also hollowed out so that the electromagnet is sitting on a 1mm layer of aluminium, just behind the black foam pad you can see in later pictures. This was done to maximise the air gap, as further into the enclosure the electromagnet goes, the further away from your pen it will be.







The make or break test. I sellotaped a couple of magnets onto the end of one of my pens to test it out, and was relieved that after a little bit of tweaking, the pen was levitating.




























Techie stuff:
I programmed a PIC microprocessor to take a reading from a hall effect sensor which is placed in the end of the electromagnet. This sensor measures the electromagnetic field and adjusts the current of the electromagnet to compensate. Basically as the pen moves towards or away from the electromagnet the field changes, and the microprocessor compensates to either pull the pen closer, or let it move away, causing it to levitate.

I feel like I've missed something...  but C'est la vié


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## Displaced Canadian (Sep 15, 2015)

That is just plain awesome. Inspiring work.


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## George417 (Sep 15, 2015)

AWESOME


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## SteveJ (Sep 15, 2015)

Wow.  Great work Brad.


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## evan bahr (Sep 15, 2015)

pretty darn cool, if you ask me!


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## magpens (Sep 15, 2015)

Thanks for posting this info, Brad; . very interesting ! . Congratulations on your success and win in the SE !


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## larrystephens (Sep 15, 2015)

Way cool stuff!


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## jttheclockman (Sep 15, 2015)

I would say this would qualify in that new catagory. First entry


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## BradG (Sep 15, 2015)

lol John I'm not even going to open that can of worms here. 

Thanks for all the nice words all  They were fun to make


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## Ironwood (Sep 15, 2015)

Now that's mind-boggling to say the least .


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## skiprat (Sep 15, 2015)

Wow !!  Pretty damned cool stuff there Brad.. !!

One thing......get a set of external jaws for that chuck.  Sticking out that far is asking for trouble. I reckon you only have one coil of the scroll holding that chunk !!

Is the mag lev thing adjustable/ So that you can vary where in between it is held?  I assume it has to have iron in it too?

Cool stuff !!:biggrin:


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## Skie_M (Sep 15, 2015)

May the Force be with you? 




skiprat said:


> Wow !!  Pretty damned cool stuff there Brad.. !!
> 
> One thing......get a set of external jaws for that chuck.  Sticking out that far is asking for trouble. I reckon you only have one coil of the scroll holding that chunk !!
> 
> ...



Hmmm ... according to the description of the design elements, iron is not required.  Magnets are!


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## Dale Lynch (Sep 15, 2015)

Too smart for me to follow along,good thing there's pictures.Super cool creativity,design,and craftsmanship.


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## Si90 (Sep 15, 2015)

Very cool Brad. I have been toying with the idea of lights for a while. This has me thinking about it again. Very well done


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## bobleibo (Sep 15, 2015)

Wow! One of these days I'm coming to the UK and going to handcuff myself to you and Skip so that I can learn to use a metal lathe and all of these chemicals. The possibilities are endless! 
Cheers
Bob


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## BradG (Sep 15, 2015)

Skiprat said:
			
		

> Wow !!  Pretty damned cool stuff there Brad.. !!
> 
> One thing......get a set of external jaws for that chuck. Sticking out that far is asking for trouble. I reckon you only have one coil of the scroll holding that chunk !!
> 
> ...



I do have a set, though I was torn between using those and having considerably less contact surface area between the jaws and the piece, or doing it this way where the full length of the jaw was in touch. There was over a thread left on it, but I know it was pushing it :biggrin:

No the pen doesn't need to contain ferrous metals. You can either build a magnet into the end of the pen, or if you just want to display a pen, drop a stack of magnets inside the lid of the pen removing the nib, and you can levitate it that way.

The distance the object can levitate is determined by the size of the rare earth magnets used. More magnets together inside the pen will increase the gap. As you can see in my pic, lets say thats 10mm. the magnets are 2mm lower than the top of the pen.. so that means is actually levitating 12mm... add the extra mm for the thickness of the enclosure of the electromagnet gives us 13mm levitation. if I added another 12.5mm x 12.5mm magnet to the pen you may get it as far as an inch if you're lucky.

Im touring with the idea of making half a dozen circuits and putting them together as kits including the electromagnet & power supply. that way others could make their own maglev pen stands. id imagine a wooden version of mine would look amazing with burl. brass trimmings... can just see it :biggrin: .... can see me buying a wood lathe some time in the future for things like that

In terms of levitation there's different designs which can be used... there's always the type which makes a platform float with 4 electromagnets beneath, but these are a little more complex. you can float a full bottle of beer on one though to give you an idea of their capabilities.




Si90 said:


> Very cool Brad. I have been toying with the idea of lights for a while. This has me thinking about it again. Very well done



Definitely. I Love your attention to detail with your pens and I'm sure you will come up with some really great things. 

I have this schematic in the back of my mind for a future project. This would allow us to transmit electricity to the pen rather than it requiring batteries.  This way when the pen was in the desk area it would illuminate, or could be made to illuminate when placed on its stand. add a tilt switch and you can add a variable so it glows when its picked up








bobleibo said:


> Wow! One of these days I'm coming to the UK and going to handcuff myself to you and Skip so that I can learn to use a metal lathe and all of these chemicals. The possibilities are endless!
> Cheers
> Bob



My shops always open :wink:


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## magier412 (Sep 15, 2015)

The force is strong in this one...



Amazing work!


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## Jim15 (Sep 15, 2015)

Great work.


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## BradG (Sep 16, 2015)

magier412 said:


> The force is strong in this one...
> 
> 
> 
> Amazing work!



I was torn between a red or a blue LED :biggrin:


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## bluwolf (Sep 16, 2015)

BradG said:


> magier412 said:
> 
> 
> > The force is strong in this one...
> ...


 
You definitely made the right choice:wink:

Brad this pen was slick the first time I saw it and even slicker with the details explained.

Mike


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## BradG (Sep 17, 2015)

bluwolf said:


> BradG said:
> 
> 
> > magier412 said:
> ...



Thanks Mike. Definitely a fun one to make. Still finding it difficult not to pick it up and swing it round making VOOM VOOM noises.


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## kruzzer (Sep 17, 2015)

Wow... way cool and over the top... Are you going to marker them????


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## firewhatfire (Sep 17, 2015)

Lets see that light saber floating in that device.  all lit up.


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## BradG (Sep 17, 2015)

kruzzer said:


> Wow... way cool and over the top... Are you going to marker them????



Unlikely  With the time these ones take to make id more than likely just keep it in my personal collection



firewhatfire said:


> Lets see that light saber floating in that device.  all lit up.



Unfortunately it would be too heavy with the light effect! Acrylics quite a lump


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## mikespenturningz (Sep 19, 2015)

Wow that is awesome.


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