Low Cost Electric Kistka (Melted Crayon Pen)

I've seen and am aware of a couple of cool art forms using wax

• Batik - an Indonesian material, where wax is places on the material and then dyed and the wax prevents the areas from absorbing the dye
• Pysanky Eggs - A method where wax is placed on the egg and dyed, then more wax is added (on the areas that don't want to be dyed) and so on and so on

I thought the pens were cool but required continual heating up to allow the wax to flow.

Below are the instruction for creating essentially a Kistka style crayon pen out of a glue gun, a broom handle and a 3D printer nozzle.

The Nozzle

• 10W Glue Gun (the smaller and cooler ones)
• Screw Driver
• 3D printer brass nozzle (0.2, 0.4 and 0.6mm)
• Drill + Drill Bit - I had access to a drill press (a friends)
• Tapping Set

Handle

• Piece of wooden dowl/broom handle
• Way to shape it - lathe, poor mans lathe (drill), carving tools etc.
• Wood cutting tool - hacksaw, tenon saw, bandsaw
• Chisel
• Sand paper

If possible

• Sanding option (paper, belt sander etc.) - I had access to a belt sander (a friends)
• Tapping Set - I had access to a friends
• Lathe
• Bandsaw
• Angle Grinder with grinding disk
• Dremel for sanding
• Glue gun for gluing down the wire

First job is to remove the nozzle and heating element of the glue gun.

1. Make sure the glue gun stick is removed, you can do this by heating it up and then pulling out the glue stick

MAKE SURE IT IS UNPLUGGED!!!

1. Using the philips head screw driver, remove the 5 screws
2. gently pry open the glue gun.
3. Pull out the metal nozzle and wiring

The wire is connected to the heating element. With this glue gun the heating element is held in place by a metal clip that wraps around the nozzle. It is recommended to remove the heating element as too much movement or pulling can break the heating element.

The orange rubber material from each end was also removed as this is not required

This is probably the part which requires the most technical skill. Below are two potential options

Drilling and Jamming in:

If you don't have access to a tapping set, then this might be your only option.

1. Select a drill bit as close to the outer diameter of your 3D Print Brass Nozzle
2. Place the heat gun nozzle in a clamp and drill out the metal
3. Sand back the heat gun nozzle until the tip is neatened up and level
4. Wrap your 3D printer brass nozzle in some PTFE tape and carefully jam it into the glue gun nozzle

Drilling and Tapping

1. Select a drill bit as close to the inside diameter of the thread of your 3d Printer Brass Nozzle
2. Drill out the required thickness
3. Sand back until the tip of the nozzle is flat so that tapping it will be straight
4. Use tapping set to add a thread to the nozzle. The tapping set works a bit like driving a screw into the nozzle but there is a little bit more technique required (namely plenty of lubricating oil and twisting in reverse to break off the cut pieces)

Please refer to some tutorial about using the tapping set. This tutorial and author does not have the expertise to step you through tapping a thread.

The nozzles that were in stock cam in a bag of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0mm

Testing out the nozzles, the 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 mm tips allowed the wax to remain in the reservoir without dripping out until it was brushed across the page.

The 0.8mm would freely drip wax onto the page, it is recommended that the 0.8mm should not be used for this application.

Some scrap down was selected (this wood was from a replacement broom handle) and cut down to roughly 20cm.

The coke can is for an idea of scale.

1. Cut wood to length
2. Measure up where the nozzle piece is going to go (photo 3 and 4)
3. Measure the width of the nozzle
4. Cut out the part for nozzle to go
5. The bandsaw was used to cut the side walls and then the chisel to remove the material
6. Clean up the cut
7. Some sand paper and/or a rotary tool with some sand paper worked a treat in cleaning up and slightly widening the space
8. Sand down for a better fit

It was decided to use a lathe to shape the wood,

The tail-to-be end was placed in the chuck and the other end (where the nozzle would go) was supported with the slidable spike on the lathe

Using carving tools, material was removed

• Where I would pinch/hold the 'pen'
• At the tail to help remove some weight

Material was left purposely:

• Towards the back middle to help balance out the nozzle

While on the lathe, sand paper was used to clean up the handle. Working from 80 grit to 400 grit to give a nice smooth finish

Once finished with the lathe, the tail piece was cut off at the point where it was held on the lathe (see picture)

An angle grinder with a grinding plate (wider than a cutting plate) was used to cut a channel down the center for the wire.

Using some hot glue, the wires were glued in place (just in case the wires needed to be removed later).

For the finish, it was decided to use a candle for a wax finish. figuring this would be more appropriate for this project.

The author had very little skill when it cames to art and painting/drawing

Here is a demonstrating of what it can do, using the 3 different nib sizes. The 0.6 is useful for the larger areas while the 0.2 is great for fine detail.

Some observations

• You could cut the back ends off the crayons and they fit pretty much perfectly into the pen and once you had finished with that colour, pour it onto some wax paper and once it is cool you can remelt that wax later on
• The colours muddied together a bit, losing the vibrancy of the bright pink blue and green that was used, perhaps the system should have been flushed with some clear candle wax in between.
• If you wait too long between drawing the lines, a small droplett might build up, so it might be worth wiping that off before working on a detailed area.

Working through the prototyping of this, a drawing needle (these are needles used to extract medicine from vials and then will be swapped for the sharp needle) was used. The needle was too long and the inside diameter was too narrow. Often the tip not getting hot enough and as such the wax wouldn't flow

The PTFE tape was an attempt to hold it in place but it really wasn't working.

A Future plan is to create an attachment so it can be mounted on a little desktop CNC machine. That way it could 'print' out an image drawn by the hot nozzle.