Hi All,
Right, I'm wanting to engrave a logo onto a fairly small piece of aluminium (approx 95x40mm). Due to the size, there's some fairly intricate detail, to the point where it looks like I'm going to need a 0.3mm cutter to get decent quality. The engraving BTW is going onto the cam cover of my Jaguar engine; and that throws up its own complications: I don't want to have a separate stick-or-screw on piece; I want it to be part of the cover itself. Whatever cutter I use has to stick approximately 2" out of the spindle nose, if I'm to be able to use the bulk of the 95mm width (actually I've got nearer 100mm, but I've taken 5mm off to cover spindle clearance issues).
I reckon there's 3 ways I can approach this, using in all cases a 0.3mm end mill:
1) Mount end mill in a home-made holder, in a standard DA collet holder. Upside = cheap and easy, Downside = potential cutter-killing runout, max RPM=4000, very slow cutting speed
2) Buy a spindle-speeder, mount cutter in spindle speeder collet. Upside = accurate, 20krpm top speed for faster cutting, less likely to kill the cutter. Downside = £2150 + 20% tax....
3) Make a dremel holder that fits on the spindle sleeve. Mount cutter in dremel. Upsides = cheap, high rpms, accurate if rigid. Downside = complex to make, tool breakage if I accidentally raise the spindle too high...
I must admit... I'm leaning towards #3...
Any other thoughts/ideas entertained.
PS: it's got to be a physical engraving. I intend to cut the logo, paint the entire cam cover British Racing Green, then mill off the paint around the engraving & across the rest of the patterned top, leaving the logo in contrasting BRG with a silver background.