Engraving advice

[Peter HallParticipant @peterhall61789]

Can anyone point me in the direction of some advice or a primer on cnc router/laser engraving? I am building some DIY oscillators and synthesizer modules and would like to be able to engrave lettering and graphics on aluminium face panels. I know less than Jack about this, but with the availability and falling prices of machines, I'm considering doing it myself. Small scale and light use only; I won't be doing this commercially. Any help gratefully received. I've tried searching the forum but came up with nothing useful.

Pete

[Peter HallParticipant @peterhall61789]

[Rik ShawParticipant @rikshaw]

Hello Pete I have spent time the last fortnight trying to do engraving on the cheap on my CNC machine. Here are a few links that you may – or not – have come across. I am trying to do bas relief outline TTF fonts but so far without success. I wish you luck.

Rik

**LINK**

**LINK**

**LINK**

**LINK**

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

I've done a little engraving on my CNC mill – a plaque for a tree in Corian, a wood plaque for my father-in-law's ashes, and some loco nameplates in brass for a member here. (See my "Nameplates" album for more photos of the process.)

The latter are shown in this pic. For all of them I did the artwork in F-Engrave, which is free, and can cope with either a png image (which I used for these, prepared with Powerpoint but there are lots of alternatives) or you can compose text directly (used for the other jobs). I have used home-made cutters, also (for the above) a 1mm 2 flute endmill. Or TC cutters are very cheap on eBay, made for PCB cutting.

Easy once you have the machine… Mine is a Denford Novamill, there are quite reasonably priced routers available now but I have no experience of them. For what it's worth, I think for engraving you need ballscrews because the cutter is making lots and lots of reversals.

Edited By John Haine on 22/10/2018 18:21:38

[Peter HallParticipant @peterhall61789]

Thanks for your suggestions. On reflection I think it's not going to be worthwhile for me to invest in the kit. I'll pay a visit to the local makerspace; they've got some lasers!

Pete

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