Nomad and Bronze?

1

Hi

I have a possible customer that wants text engraved into Bronze.

  1. Can the NOMAD do that?
  2. do i need any special endmills or can the Carbide3D ones do that?
  3. is there a particular type of Bronze i should use?
  4. What are the speeds and parameters for bronze?

I am just trying to figure out what it entails so i can either take the job or decline it.

Thanks all :smile:

2
  1. Yes
  2. If itā€™s not really fine the small ballmill can probably do it
  3. Donā€™t know
  4. You tell us :slight_smile:
3

Well, knowing that the nomad can do it sounds promising :slight_smile:

4

@oliverblum I used a V bit to engrave this on powder coated mild steel.
Have also engraved similar on AL.

It can be done. Just takes a little testing & tuning.

FullSizeRender.jpg2402Ɨ1832 637 KB

5

Hi! that looks nice, maybe I try to find some bronze scrap somewhere and try it out and see what comes out of it :slight_smile:

6

Hi Oliver, I havenā€™t engraved on a bronze sheet (0,8 mm thick), but I successfully milled it using a 2 flute end mill 0,8 mm diam. The hardness is similar to brass but a little softer. I would say a mix between brass and copper. The bronze I use is regular bronze sheet (not yellow bronze) used by many jewelers. I never tried with yellow bronze before because I could not easily find yellow bronze sheets. However I think Fire gems has some. I donā€™t know if your design is very fine and detailed. You might want to try a fine milling bit, like 0.25 mm. However Iā€™m pretty sure youā€™ll be able to engrave it making a few tests to find the right setups. Good luck!

7

This probably doesnā€™t have any bearing, but I am machining some model railroad rail components from 1mm nickel silver sheet using a 2 flute .50mm diameter square-end mill. 2ipm speed and .005" depth of cut, slotting (i.e. full width cut).

8

Here are a couple of shots of the workpiece I mentioned in the last post. It is a series of six #10 frogs (crossing noses to the Brits) for N scale (1:160) model railroad switches (ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_switch ). The frogs are still tabbed into the parent sheet of .040" nickel silver. I donā€™t actually know which alloy it is. I bought it several years ago from a knife-making supplies place. Probably 60/20/20 copper/nickel/zinc because that is the most common formulation.

P1090436.JPG1375Ɨ1178 1.14 MB

P1090430.JPG2472Ɨ1596 1.87 MB

The Nomad did an excellent machining job. The ā€œrailheadsā€ are designed at .020" wide and came out .018/.019"

3 Likes
9

Thanks everyone! Thats very helpful!