I’m guessing based on the belts and stepper motors, that there is a minim size of lettering that can be created. I’m looking at a font size to engrave of 2-3pt. and wondering if that is something that can be engraved into brass, if the right bit is used?? Can the machine move in increments that tight?
The movement grid for a Shapeoko is 1/40th of a mm.
2 pt. tall text is about 0.5mm tall, while 3pt. tall text is about 0.8mm tall, so imagine what a letter looks like on a grid of 16 or 32 units — interpolation of movement helps a bit, but you’re also removing material which deforms things and leads to tool deflection.
When I tested in acrylic w/ a diamond drag engraver, text was quite legible as a double-traced outline down to 2mm — probably a single line font would do better, and brass may yield a better result.
Probably one of the finest examples of text engraving would have been @RichCournoyer 's watch case back:
not sure how small the smallest text there was though.
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Wow! That’s fantastic. Looks like that is about the size I am looking for. I wonder what bit/speeds he used. I don’t seem to see those mentioned in the posting.
Smallest text size = 0.75mm (0.032")
Since it is Stainless…I went SLOW (2-5 ipm) and with tiny (0.001") DOC Some words are only 0.004" deep.
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Fantastic. Appreciate the input and I’ll see if I can make something happen that small.
Thanks
Can you tell me what bit you used?
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