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| Diamond Drag Engraver |
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| Pete W.:
Hi there, Andrew, Yes, that looks interesting. I do have some questions, though. If you're going to engrave alphanumeric text, do you have to programme each session individually? Or do you programme a font set of letters, numerals & punctuation characters and then call them up in something like ASCII? With a parameter for font size? If you're engraving with a diamond point, I guess you'd have to define character size in carats! :lol: :lol: :lol: Years ago, I tried to interface a Hewlett Packard digital plotter to my Mac SE using some software called MacPlot. As you may remember, fonts were quite a thing with that generation of Macs. The only problem was that there wasn't a cursive font so MacPlot printed alpha-numerics by emulating a dot matrix printer, with the danger of wearing out the plotter's pen lift solenoid! :bang: :bang: :bang: |
| awemawson:
Pete, You can use any font that Windows has available to it, or if you are really desperate define one yourself. The modern software makes things really easy compared to 'how it was'. You can define font size, various enhancements such as bold or italic, give it a curve to align the text to, reverse it as in mirror writing, taper the height from start to finish - all sorts of bells and whistles ! A far cry from my first Calcomp drum plotter driven by CP/M where not only did I have to define the fonts, I had to write the program (a poor mans Autocad),in assembler, so that I cold submit plans drawn on it for my last workshop. It all worked but the planning officer thought I was mad (probably right!) - every rafter and joist was drawn. The building tapered to make the most of the space available, and I kept a constant pitch two facet roof with a sloping ridge so each rafter and joist was different ! Andrew |
| philf:
Andrew, What size is the Dremel diamond tool. As you say it's the cheapest. I need to replace the diamond in my drag engraver and the tool is 3/16" dia. x approx 30mm long. I chipped mine when I made a mistake and ran out of spring travel. Mine uses a piece of 12mm brass rod with a reamed hole for the tool. A 1/8" BSP grub screw provides adjustable preload. I use Vectric Cut2D which will engrave any font. For TT fonts it just engraves the outline. This was a trial for a trophy shield I engraved. It was done in Times New Roman. :beer: Phil. |
| awemawson:
Not very different is it! I wanted to be able to adjust the pre-load without removing the tool and changing the effective tool length hence front adjustment. The Dremel diamond is very slightly under 1/8" - mine is in an 1/8" hole locked in place by a 6 BA screw in a collar (as the armature hasn't enough meat in it for a thread) Andrew |
| Meldonmech:
Hi Andrew, Your lettering looks well. Incidentally I have machined a number of items from rebar, and been surprised how well they turned out. Cheers David |
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