----- Original Message ----- From: "William Scalione" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I would suggest that if you plan to engrave metal with text or other > fine lines that you > try to find a spring loaded floating engraving spindle. They keep the > depth of cut at > an exact depth for the entire job. Doing letters, a difference of only a > few thousandths > of an inch in depth of cut, when using a "V" type engraving tool will > make the lettering > look very bad. You can get a constant depth on a 5000 pound bed mill > pretty easily, but > on a home made machine, built from aluminum and Ace hardware parts, it's > not so easy. > I have made a couple of non floating engraving spindles into floating > ones pretty easily. Interesting. I had never heard of a spring loaded engraving tool. I googled this to see what one looks like. http://www.2linc.com/engraving_mini.htm Unfortunately they are pretty exspensive from that place. However I have now decided that I need one of these. Looks like something I could turn on the lathe but with the telescoping portion it might be hard to keep the bit runout to a minimum. They must be made out of ground tool steel. I would be grateful if you could elaborate on converting "non floating engraving spindles into floating ones" > Also, I used a small laminate router on my machine for about a week > before it was totally > shot. Problem is it was designed to run for 2 minutes at a time, not an > hour or more that > will be required when doing engraving jobs. The bearings get hot and > then the plastic > that holds them get soft. Now you have a piece of crap spindle with an > 1/8 inch end play > which is not suitable for engraving fine lines, much less anything else. I would agree with the above. But I have had pretty good results with the first generation Rotozips. They seem to have a really good cooling design and decent sized bearings. I have run them for up to an hour without trouble. Although I have from time to time considered turing a new housing out of some aluminum tubing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
