Thread: embossing tools

Hi Ken,
There might be something here.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_milling
I heard they did chemical milling in the aircraft industry.

Phil

Hi Ken ,

I made some custom medals once, You start with a brass disk the size of the finished article, then I used Positiv20, a UV sensitive spray film, sprayed the brass disk, and baked dry, the master artwork was laser printed on overhead transparency film, and then exposed using UV light.. you then develop in dilute caustic soda, which leaves the etch resist where it was shielded from the light. and the other areas just wash away.. then you etch in ferric chloride solution, the ferric chloride dissolves the copper, and leaves the areas under the etch resist alone.. then I touched up under a magnifying glass using a sharp pointed exacto knife..

If the process sounds familiar, it should... it's the exact process used to etch printed circuit boards, and all the materials are available off the shelf at places like Jaycar. Works a treat on brass ( not surprising since it's mostly copper anyway )

Ray

you might cover the alu with wax
turtle car wax will do nicely

I just finished off the same journey mate!

I ended up making a monstrous machine to do it! I made a 6 to 1 pantograph router that ran a dremel...very underpowered but the results were bang on.

A lot depends on your design. I started out just engraving them by hand with great results as the design suited inaccuracies.
A simple blacksmiths approach is to make the image debossed. The whole stamp will emboss the image but they just punch and chisel in the reverse image into the hot steel creating a debossed logo.
That suits some designs.

I tried out many and realised that an embossed image suited more complicated designs in softer materials such as leather. Your results may be different. The problem with embossing is their is usually a lot more material to be removed.

If it's a one off and your design have a crack at just doing it by hand.
I think the first one took me a few hrs but it was quite big with a lot of material to remove. I think it was about 30mm in dia.
Their is a guy over in the bushcraft OZ forum that makes them up for members at a very fair price in my opinion. Under the $100 mark with a cnc router. His price goes up a lot if your using the stamp for commercial gain...which is a fair perspective.

I could not get any 6160 ally so I used the commercial grade from Capral.. It worked out just fine. I forget what grade it is but it's a bit softer but the standard dremel tools never cloged up with a bit of wd40 as cutting fluid. Brass is another option.

There is also a guy, Darwin, who calls himself Gellandangan on the ABF that makes custom stamps for leather and steel. Here is his website http://www.gelandangan.netau.net/
Making them yourself sounds like far more fun though.....

Cheers,
Ew