Engraving hardened steel help!!!!!

[lawrence walicki]

I'm machining my glock slides, everything's coming out perfectly except for engraving.... I ran a 90 degree countersink that engraves like a champ on soft steels and aluminum. Countersink allows me to engrave with some thickness and depth rather than a fine point 60 or 30 degree engraving tool that looks like it's just scratching more than engraving. Only problem is the lines aren't crisp, they look more chewed and forced than clean. I tried multiple feeds/speeds, faster spindle speed, slower feed, vise versa Any advice or what type of engraving tool to use? I'm running a Hurco vm30 10000 rpm max.

[lawrence walicki]

Here's some pics!

[Mr. M]

Can you use a small ball endmill?

[lawrence walicki]

Thought about it but I'd need to use a 1/32 or smaller and have heard that in order to use that small, I'd need more spindle speed. That American flag is .006 deep

[Mr. M]

No, I used 1/32 ball end mills all the time for that in machines with only 10k. Maybe do a few depth cuts since you are only doing 1

[Sticky]

Countersinks suck for engraving. You can use a 1/16 ball end mill to do the job, no need to go down to a 1/32. We use 1/16" 2 flute ballmills to do 6061-304, and we are making details and letters as small as .06" tall. For really small stuff we only do about .001" ADOC, for letters above .100 we use .002-.003 ADOC. 10k spindle is just fine if you are doing smaller details because most machines do a poor job of making nice arcs and lines that small when moving over 20ipm (some machines more like 10ipm or less) It sounds slow but goes fast because the detail is so small.

[crazy^millman]

Zero surface speed at the tip is your problem no way around it using that tool. If on a 3 axis machine think about a ball endmill and tilt the part at least 15 degrees if you can go to 45 degree will be much better. What we do in 5 axis machining tilt the head so we get away from tip machining and get into flute cutting machining on ball endmills. Huge difference in tool life and quality of parts being produced. Just comes down to what you want for a finish quality. What you had had the same problems, just was not showing. Now the reality of what you were really seeing is showing through on this material. Think about a Ball Em with some title on the part and be amazed how nice they will come out. Can always go with a diamond coating and it will help with tool life in the hard material.

[lawrence walicki]

Yea my problem with such hard steel was that the steel literally ground my engraving tip down, by the end it was nearly flat, I've engraved a ton of soft steels and aluminum and I got away with it. I'll try running a ball endmill this week and keep you guys posted. Has anyone tried a dragging spring loaded diamond engraver before? My tooling rep recommended that especially engraving over 3d parts not just flat surfaces. Thanks again for the advice!

[Oppiz]

I don't know if this will work for your application, but I've used small carbide centerdrills for engraving with success.

[Mike@Dive Lab Inc.]

check out these from Nine 9. I have one and they work great. http://www.everede.net/nine9_2013_index_engr_tool.html.

[lawrence walicki]

I'll def give that nine 9 a call, those look spot on! Thanks again everyone for the help and tips!

[Nikos Petrakis]

I use small carbide center drills same as OPPIZ

[jeff]

http://www.2linc.com/

 

These guys have some engraving tools that may help you

[Hintze]

I used small ball endmills to engrave hardened parts at work, it was a complete headache! seemed like if I had a .002 tolerance for my depth anything above didn't fully engrave and anything deeper the endmill would break. I switched to a hand made six sided engraved tool that works pretty decent, takes a couples mins to make and they last, just kicks up its fair share of burrs.