2D Barcoding using Mastercam

[John King]

Has anyone heard about doing this? My customer wants us to start engraving our parts with a 2D barcode.

The boss feels that we should be able to put a tool in the machine and use it to engrave the parts.

Is it possible? If so, where do you buy the tools from?

Thanks for your help!

John

[jctjct]

We have used carbide centerdrills for this.

[Guest]

We use micro100 60 degree engraving tools for any of our engraving needs.

 

Available thru MSC

 

HTH

[KEVCAM]

We use carbide d-lip blanks. Grind the inclusive angle to 90 or 60 deg point, with 8-12 deg back releif as well as 8 deg relif on very tip. Chain the letter text as window contours, and machine to a depth of 0.005 to 0.008" deep. It works very well, and looks very professional.

[Guest]

We bought a diamond engraving point (part#9929) for a Dremel electric die grinder from the local hardware store and stuck it in a collet. We mill aprox. .005" - .008" deep for letter, numbers, locating lines, ect...

[Guest]

Forgot to mention, in our case, almost reguardless of material type, we spin'er around 3000rpm. Don't be shy.

[John King]

Another question, I have never machined a 2D barcode before. I am sure there is a formula for it. Does anyone know how the code works so that it can be read by a scanner?

Our customer said another supplier to them uses a software package to generate the G code for machining the 2D bar code.

Has anyone heard of this? If so where do you buy it from.

Thanks for the help.

John

[John King]

Another question, I have never machined a 2D barcode before. I am sure there is a formula for it. Does anyone know how the code works so that it can be read by a scanner?

Our customer said another supplier to them uses a software package to generate the G code for the machining the 2D bar code.

Has anyone heard of this? If so where do you buy it from.

Thanks for the help.

John

[Psychomill]

MC can get the "font" for barcodes as long as its installed on you PC (like through MSWord and such). It's called "CarolinaBar....." . There are different formats so you'll need to find out what barcode type they need to use. The only thing is I'm not sure how the scanner (barcode reader) defines the "fat lines" from the "skinny lines". Don't know if you can contour or have to fill in like a pocket.

 

Use Drafting to create the 'note' then break the the drafting into geometry and you can cut it.

 

HTH

[Paul McGarr]

True Type bar cade font's would be the way to go. You are probably going to have to pocket out the thick lines though. I am suprised that a bar code reader will read an engraving with such poor contrast. I find it interesting and extremely useful if it works.

 

Please post a message if you are successful, and tell us how you did it. We have thousands of mold components here and bar coding them would make assembly real easy.

 

By the way, I also use micro100 60 deg engraving points.

 

Paul