M3 v2 First Tests

[McKenzie Penworks]

Well... Day one of training on making the M3 Metal composite blanks was epic failure yesterday but we took the lessons learned from that and had some success today.

Cobaltium and carbon rod, Copper and Steel Mokume Gane square blank and a "Oops wrong blue for Cobaltium" and carbon square sheet....

We've got some production stuff to adjust to fit this in with DiamondCast but, I think we'll be able to pull this off nicely!

 

[KMCloonan]

Looks like an abstract painting. Pretty cool!

 

[secureideas]

Looks very cool. Can't wait to get some.

 

[McKenzie Penworks]

Working on a bit of rebranding and making some certificates while we get comfortable with the making of the product... Then we need to build some inventory because the last thing we need is for us to release it only to have it be impossible to get again. Similar challenges with the LaserLinez kits I suppose in that regard. Probably be a few weeks of figuring out how to work this into production without screwing up our DiamondCast production schedule

 

[duncsuss]

Not knowing what shade of blue cobaltium should be, I don't take offense at what you made there - it looks great to me.

I always wondered whether M3 would be suitable for the type of non-kit pens I make (threading with hand taps and dies, not on a metal lathe). If you have any small scrap pieces I'd love to try it out so I know whether it's something I could offer my clients.

 

[McKenzie Penworks]

Not knowing what shade of blue cobaltium should be, I don't take offense at what you made there - it looks great to me.

I always wondered whether M3 would be suitable for the type of non-kit pens I make (threading with hand taps and dies, not on a metal lathe). If you have any small scrap pieces I'd love to try it out so I know whether it's something I could offer my clients.

Fountain pens are a big part of our business... I'll be testing the threading of several different recipes to see how well we can get it to thread. Good excuse to dust off the taps and dies! From my research, folks had varying degrees of success and failure and reported that there was a lot of variability in how well it took threads. I'll be looking for consistency.... We've got the equipment to do it right.

 

[jrista]

Exciting!

I'd be happy to, um, take that "mistake" plate off your hands....

 

[goldendj]

Those are fabulous ... I don't see why those aren't an epic success. Unless the material properties are off? Too brittle, too hard/soft, ... ? I'd take any of them in a heartbeat

 

[McKenzie Penworks]

Oh I'm happy with these... but we're still going to run them through tests like threading, etc. I've learned over the years to temper my excitement when we have something new to offer. (Pretty sure I spent $300+ on shipping new parts out when we realized a good chunk of our new pen kits had parts that were out of spec... I just happened to test 3 pens that went together perfectly... oops!) Production is going to be a big change for us compared to our current methods so it'll take a few weeks to iron out the details there. The big blue sheet was just the wrong pigment for the original color of the materal. I kinda dig the richer blue though so we'll probably end up using it in the end.

Saturday's tests were... bad. Found out some of our dyes weren't compatible and ended up with rubbery messes that are going to be less than fun to clean out of our molds. Once I figured out what the problem was it was easy enough to switch gears and we ended up with usable material that I now get to play with a bit. (Any excuse to get to use my lathe these days!)

 

[Jarod888]

I really like the blue in the sheet. It's definitely a winner in my opinion. Looking forward to trying these out once you get them up and running in production mode.

 

[McKenzie Penworks]

This is what he called Lapis blue with gold. Picture doesn't really show it but it's very metallic in person. Cast this as a 6x6x1 block to see what it would look like. It's a size that can be used for full size pen kits or cut into ring blanks even. (1.5x1.5 squares)