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TWEAKIE my CNC machine under construction. |
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CNC is only limited by our imagination. |
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Making stuff - Engraving. |
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(43) Perhaps CNC builders do need to remind themselves every now and again.
(44) Nice engraving but bad layout (it reads incorrectly). The typeface chosen does not have sufficient spacing after the full stop and it almost runs into the next character. This was engraved using a 1mm milling cutter.
(45) Some notices are made just for fun.
(46) This panel was engraved and then the holes and profile were cut with the same 1mm endmill using the same G-Code file, produced with G-Simple.
(47) This type of engraving is very effective but is quite time consuming to produce.
(48) Different type of engraving. This was produced using a simple, vibrating, impact engraver (ideal for harder metals such as stainless steel). Shown here are some of the typefaces available with the Mach3 engraving wizard.
CNC machines, like Tweakie, are well suited to engraving but the first snag encountered is the lack of single stroke or stick fonts to use. Microsoft, in its wisdom, has settled on closed type fonts (this is where the start and finish of the line forming each character occurs in the same place - each character is a closed loop) which means that instead of the letters looking like this:- EXAMPLE they look like this :-
These closed type fonts are fine in many applications, especially when engraving large characters, but when it comes to small stuff the centre of the letter A, for example, goes missing.
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Mach3 has a dozen or so fonts built into its engraving wizard and about half of these are open type and ideal for engraving purposes but it only supports the typesetting of one line of text at a time. This is not too much of a problem but it is fiddly and time consuming to calculate the X & Y start coordinates for each line separately. A free software, StickFont by Scott Martinez is a single stroke text to G-Code converter and is extremely useful for small characters. Unfortunately it does not scale up well (as all characters are constructed from straight lines) and it becomes blocky and untidy for characters larger than say 10mm heights. There is other software out there which does enable the setup of multi line text perfectly but so far I have not found a really good version to try before I buy. If you find one please let me know, my e-mail is on page one. Using an impact engraver is extremely simple, a small bracket to fit the, usually hand held, device to the Z axis is all that is required. Results obtained are very much dependant on the material used, and I am still experimenting with various materials so watch this space. |
