Engraving

Would anyone know of an engraver or engraving service with reasonable costs. I want to have the top slide index drum engraved similar to the cross slide one pictured below. We had a local engraver with very good pricing but he is retired and the other local engravers prices are scary.

Thanks

Ron It would help if we knew where you live

Roy

Hi Roy,

Barnstaple, North Devon.

Ron

Can you do the division lines yourself with a simple pointed tool either on the lathe or mill ? This would reduce the cost. Some engravers up here in the Midlands but getting fewer as the industry declines. Diegrave in Walsall come to mind as one still going

Hi Ron i did this on my cnc mill 4th axis if you can give me the dia to be engraved and dims of the lettering and graduations i will have a go at engraving it

Geoff

Chris, it did cross my mind as to whether I could do it myself, I have a decent rotary table and you can get small engraving bits. I probably dont have the speed on the mill for such a small bit but it may be ok as the lines are very shallow. I will give it some thought.

Thanks

Thats very kind of you Geoff will have a measure up and let you know.

Regards Ron

if you wanted a simple project Harold Halls design provides for accurately lengthed graduations. Just 'scratching' with a suitable tool bit makes neat engravings for dials, you don't necessarily require high spindle speeds...

Engraving Tool

Edited By RichardN on 09/09/2019 11:07:39

Done with a lathe tool on its side, indexing using a change gear at the back of the spindle. Numbers stamped with ordinary punches using a guide held in the toolpost.

Lots of ways of doing the lines. I did mine wth a sinple indexing tool I made up using the mill circle function and quill to score the lines. The problem i had was the diameter of the knob was small enough that punched numbers were weak at their sides. The only solution i see to that would be repeat indexing a small proportion each side of the line and re-striking the punch? Perhaps it'd be possible in some applications to etch a brass strip for insertion or mark/punch a thin steel strip??

pgk

With a mill and rotary table, that sort of engraving can be done. We did two, one with 118 divisions and numbers every ten, and another with 125 divisions and also numbers every ten. They are fitted to the lathe cross slide and the tailstock. A jig was required to hold the punches for the numbers. We took the easy option and made them out of aluminium.

If I remember, I will take pictures of the engraver. It is a simple push type using the quill, I tried rotary tips with unusable results.

For a start, forget all the unnecessary zeros and mark it up in single units. That would halve the cost - or should do!

Thanks for the tips guys but Geoff Adams (above post) has very kindly said he will CNC it for me, which is very kind of him and very much appreciated.

Ron

Yes l to was thinking about engraving,for a dial as l will need one for the rotary table l am doing,plus the southbend could do with some fresh dials that can be seen ,mine are worn ,l think doing the lines will be alright using a 100 tooth gear etc but its the letter bit that will be hard ,getting them neat ,neil said he made a jig for his ,any sketch of the jig please neil

john

Several videos by mrpete222 back about 5 years ago showed how he made new dials. Not by engraving - he punched the numbers. Here is the vid where he did that, the fourth of the series.

**LINK**

Not as neat as a full engraving job, but if doing all the job yourself is more satisfying than sending it out...

.

... and GHT's book on building the Universal Pillar Tool describes in detail how to tidy things up after punching numbers.

MichaelG.

.

http://modelenginenews.org/meng/upt/index.html

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 11/09/2019 09:18:31

Here are our efforts at engraving the scales for the lathe:

As usual, the text which is written first, ends up stuffed in the middle of the photos which appear in the opposite order that they were added.

The inserts have VCGT 1604 printed on the box, but I think the tip rads are much smaller. You would have to use a magnifying glass to see that there is a rad, and not a sharp point. If using a rotary table to do the engraving, it would be important to get the work running with absolute minimum radial runout. I had to lock the mill spindle from rotation, as the slightest movement would ruin the spacing. I couldn't do anything about the backlash between the quill splines and the pulley which was locked, but luck was on my side that day. For the 118 graduations, the RT had to be set to degrees and minutes. Keeping concentration while cutting the three lengths of line was too much for me and there are a couple of mistakes on each scale.

Well done old mart that jig seems just the ticket,will make one up,many thanks ,will try an get back in to gear over the next few days.

Aluminium is much easier to work with than steel, including the straight knurling on the lathe cross slide wheel. As for the jig, it only does one size and to avoid the variations in depth of the punch marks, it is preferable to do all the stamping exactly on the centre line. This would need some marks on the jig to space the numbers each side of the engraved lines equally. Doing test stamp placings on a flat piece of metal and measuring the pitch of the most visually pleasing pairs would be the best method. Two marks for double numbers, and three different marks for single and triple numbers. The stamping on the cross slide wheel was done using the jig, and the tailstock was freehand, and it shows.

As in the video, there are long curled burrs left as the tip cuts, I found that brushing them with a brass wire brush gets rid of them quite well (real brass, not brass plated steel). The aluminium needs to be a hard alloy, not soft pure stuff.

Edited By old mart on 12/09/2019 20:11:47