Thread: Engraved name and data plates.

Hello Mark,

Sounds great. Do you have any photos of the engraving you have done?

Can you engrave on cylindrical surfaces or are you restricted to flat surfaces only?

How fine a line can you engrave?

The reason for the questions is that I want to make a couple of fittings for my Schaublin mill and engraving would be the only acceptable (to me) method of creating the divisions required.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards Bob.

I dropped a load of protractor plates and index wheels off to a guy I engrave them for so I'm kind of short of samples at the moment. I'll go back tomorrow and and take some photos. A cylindrical surface is theoretically possible with a bit of mucking about.

The first photo here is a aluminium test engraving plate for my lathe, which will be done in brass eventually, the smallest text is 2mm tall. The second is of some aluminium parts I etch for a guy, the parts in blue are masked off but not etched and have about a 5cm radius and show the finest detail I'm doing so far. All blue items in the second pic are rejects due to defects in the film.

Attachment 142586 Attachment 142587

This is great! I am involved in restoring four Woodfast lathes at the moment and they are all missing their speed charts. Having them made up like this pic would be brilliant. I'll head off and see if I can find some original pics.

Nice work Mark,

Here are a couple of photographs of one of the scales for my mill that I wouldn't mind trying to replicate. The quality evident in your test pieces would certainly be in keeping with the original. The scales that I would like to make would be metric. The original scales are anodised aluminium. Given the hardness of the anodising, would they be best anodised after engraving?

Regards Bob.

What format artwork do you require?

Bob: I should be able to anodise the aluminium afterwards, I'll include a pic of stainless steel as that would be pretty durable but possibly less contrasty than aluminium. I found bead blasting can give a nice frosty finish to aluminium which makes it easier to read and I assume stainless will be the same too. the finest linewidth is about 1/3mm at present as the longer I etch the wider/deeper the line becomes.

Master Splinter: I draw the artwork in Corel Draw! which lets me import a scan of the original and draw the linework and text over the top clean and distortion free. I may be wrong but I think TIFF files have built in scaling information to actual size.

Groggy: The more information the better with regard to physical dimensions and fonts/letter sizes etc. The trick would be for me to work up the artwork and email it so you can print it and proofread as well as check for fit before final etching, I can also etch dimples for drilling instead of a centre punch.

So a Corel file is first preference, followed by a scan in TIFF format, followed by a scan of the original plate on the flatbed scanner with steel rules for scale. I will need a colour photo/scan for painting information. As much information as possible such as whether it needs to bend around a curved surface would also be handy.

Thank you very much for the reply Mark.

Regards Bob.

Mark, I am interested in getting four plates like the one shown, the size is about 90x100mm, I'll get exact measurements for you shortly.



Is it possible to make something like this?

Hi Groggy, What you have there are ink silk screened onto anodised aluminium as opposed to engraving, the images are tiny so it's a bit hard to see detail. There would be two options I can do:

One: Is to replace the red border and red text with the raised silver lines and silver text so there are only two colours on the metal label: silver (in place of red) and the black background.

Two: Is to frame the red lines and text with a thin raised metal border as I need the border to separate the black paint from the red paint.

In short my method can't have two colours touching without the intervening raised metal border or fence between them.

Bob: I'm attaching a sample of 1mm deep engraving on 4mm stainless steel. Brushed or polished stainless is usually limited in viewing angle because of the light reflections. This example is bead blasted to give a satin chrome-like finish you see on micrometers which gives a very durable finish with a very wide viewing angle and may be suitable for your mill.

Also I've decided to set a minimum charge of eight dollars so if you require tiny labels smaller than say credit card size I will do multiple copies to make up the eight dollars value.

Mark,

I need 3 speed decals:

100mm high x 80mm wide, black on silver or vice-versa would be fine, in a similar layout to the pic shown in the post below.

I also need:

2 x "Woodfast Model 900" decals about 300mm long x 50mm wide, and
1 x "Woodfast Model 400" about 150mm long x 40mm wide.

All on aluminium would be good.

Originally Posted by Groggy

Mark,

I need 3 speed decals:

100mm high x 80mm wide, black on silver or vice-versa would be fine, in a similar layout to the pic shown in the post below.

I also need:

2 x "Woodfast Model 900" decals about 300mm long x 50mm wide, and
1 x "Woodfast Model 400" about 150mm long x 40mm wide.

All on aluminium would be good.

Ok Groggy, if you can private message me your email and we'll get things under way. Once I get some detailed pics I'll draft up the art work for you to take a look at.

Cheers,
Mark

Just to say I received my Steam Engine name plate yesterday from Mark and am very happy. Excellent work and very reasonable

https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...ct-argus-1.jpg

That looks great.

Nameplate on base with engine