Personal Project
Benchy Enamel Pins
3DBenchy – The bench-mark model most recognized by any 3D printing enthusiast. He who has christened many a machine, including both of my printers. What better way to pay homage to 10 years of a little boat with a big personality than to be the first project on a brand new machine? With a twist though — this isn’t a 3D printed project.
For the last 3 months or so I have been toying with the thought of designing some custom enamel pins for myself and as potential personalized gifts for friends. I have also been slowly pushing the bounds as to how small of an endmill I can go, with the wax seal project using a 1/32″ bit.
So when my new Carvera mini-desktop CNC arrived figured this would be the perfect way to break it in and learn. Started off modeling the pin design in CAD using Solidworks, and aiming to make it as small as possible while maintaining a certain level of detail.
Had to put some amount of thought regarding fixturing as pins are typically thin and I had purchased some 1/16″ aluminum plate to use as stock. My Carvera also doesn’t currently have a vice, so I went with the waste-board method, adding a few tabs that would be removed after the final toolpath.
From there used HSMworks to generate the tool path g-code, and ordered some 0.4mm endmills because that was how far I had decided to push some of the thinnest detail sections.
The milling process itself went pretty smoothly. Did break a few of the micro endmills figuring out my feeds and speeds and how much I could flirt with the depth of cut. And I made a few variations of Benchy cutouts with different cavity depths as there was a lot of uncertainty regarding the next step of filling the pin.
What actually ended up being the most challenging part of the project was adding the pop of color. I personally didn’t think the generic ‘enamel’ branded paints from the craft store would cut it, and it seemed like some people online had success using resin as it flowed nicely to fill the cavities.
With that I set off starting the process using clear resin with pigment powders in an attempt to make the first pin… this failed miserably. The pin cavities were far too shallow to accumulate enough resin for any sort of opacity to the coloring and just looked as if I had filled it with a clear coat. Back to the drawing board I did what I should have done in the first place and gone with actual enamel paint — they are called enamel pins for a reason.
Quick run to Lowes and was ready for the next attempt using the Testors paint set. Using a toothpick I mixed up 3 varying shades of green and began to fill the pins. Initially there was a lot of effort placed in staying between the lines for each of the cavities, but after a lot of struggle figured it could just be sanded down after the fact.
Letting the pins dry for about 12 hours, and mounting the pin post backing they were finally ready to wet-sand using some 800 and then 1000 extra fine grit paper.
Extra happy with the results! Though this clearly isn’t a sustainable business venture given the amount of time and resources it takes to produce just one pin, it was a good learning experience and overall enjoyable project. Will likely make some more fun pin designs in the future, so keep an eye out for those on my Instagram.
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