Mike Lyon

Painting Drawing Printmaking Japanese Woodblock Printing Furniture Lighting

  • About
    • CV
    • Biography & Technical Development
    • Artist’s Statement
    • Contact
  • Portfolio
    • Drawing
    • Woodblock
    • Painting
    • Equipment
    • Furniture
    • Lithography
    • Silkscreen
    • Workshops
    • Video
  • Exhibitions
  • Representation
  • Press

“Shea” 77 x 45 inch pen and ink drawing

December 5, 2006 By Mike Lyon

I’ve been using the Z-axis of my CNC machine to lift the pen from the paper during jogs to new drawing locations, but these very small movements of .05 inches or so have severely worn a single tooth in the pinion gear which moves the Z so it will have to be replaced… In order to avoid such uneven wear in the future, I developed a solenoid operated pen lifter which also significantly speeds completion of the drawings, as the solenoid lift and drop is almost instantaneous while the Z moves much slower… “Shea” involved about 5 million lines of movement code including over 100,000 pen lifts — seems to work quite well!

1 2006_12_04_shea.jpg "Shea", Dec. 4, 2006, 77x45, pen and ink drawing
2 2006_12_04_shea_detail.jpg "Shea" detail
3 2006_11_20_solenoid_pen.jpg The mounted pen assembly in operation
4 2006_11_20_solenoid_pen_detail.jpg Detail showing simple pen guide (a small hole)

Filed Under: Drawing Tagged With: Axis, CNC Machine, Drawing, Pen and Ink Drawing, Pinion Gear, Shea, Solenoid

Subscribe to receive email notification of new articles
Loading

PDF DOWNLOADS

  • Beach Museum Catalog
  • Grabado y Edicion No 36
  • Kansas City Collection
  • Kemper Museum Catalog
  • Kyoto Catalog
  • Mike Lyon CV
  • Post Digital Printmaking (Chapter 10)
  • Technical Development

Follow me

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 1968–2025 Mike Lyon & Lyon Art Ltd, Kansas City, Missouri, USA all rights reserved · Log in