Engraving Wood - What machines are available?

I have never done it myself but have read about it. Essentially you will have 4 options (off the top of my head) Option 1 - CNC. CNC come in many forms. XY will give you two forward and back plus left and right. XYZ will also give you up and down. Big $$$ and steep learning curve. Designs done on computer for output to CNC machine.

Option 2 - Sandblasting. A template is created in a material impervious to sandblast medium. Blast out the wood in the relief of the template.

Option 3 - handheld router - Using templates you will cut the lettering.

Option 4 - hand carving. Using sharpt tools and a lot of atristry you willl make your signs.

IIRC - Norm did a NYW where some of these technigues may have been described (Not sure about CNC)

Somone else with mroe experience may be ablle to give you opinions on these and other techniques. If you find a good solution I would love to hear what you came up with and how your final output looks.

Look here:

cliff

Cool

| Option 1 - CNC. CNC come in many forms. XY will give you two | forward and back plus left and right. XYZ will also give you up and | down. Big $$$ and steep learning curve. Designs done on computer | for output to CNC machine.

Big $$$ - not necessarily. Follow the link below to see a small $ CNC machine in progress (I cut the parts from $25 worth of baltic birch last night).

The learning curve is definitely there. It isn't so much steep as long. :-)

The little CNC machine, BTW, is sitting on a larger CNC machine and with its 1/4800" (0.00021") step size will be considerably more precise than its mama. It's being built to do joinery rather than engraving but there's no reason you couldn't build one for engraving...

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

Not mentioned in the previous list was laser engraving. I use a laser engraver on my work. The machine is very expensive, but you can always sub out the engraving work until you get enough volume to buy something to do it yourself.

Paul Proffitt Suwanee, GA

No wrote:

Other methods (do google search) include something called a duplicarver (you can make something similar), stencils (CMT makes kits, including a 3-D one), and something called a pantograph - used to copy or enlarge/reduce a drawing. Seems like it would be fairly easy to make something like the old Koh-i-nor Rapidograph lettering system used by draftsmen, modified to use a Dermel or cutter head.

That is a very neat machine. I am a little concerned that they will only warrantee it for 400 hours of use. But it sure has some nice possibilities. Thanks for the link!! djs

It looks to me that the machine's useful life will be totally dependent on the hardness of material that you carve. And how much material you remove. If your demands were not that great, it would probably last a long time. If not, well, that is why they only warrenty if for 400 hours.