If you work with pure cylinders then it's really pretty easy. I made Stainless Steel Technical pencils turned on my lathe and custom engraved them. It's simple 2.5D cutting unless the body slopes and then you have to start working in 3D and the price goes up 10X. Even ArtCAM could have a problem with sloping surfaces. If it was a constant slope you could just offset the axis so the surface remained constant but the character size would change unless you compensated in your art work. Another way it to float the cutting head so it's spring loaded and will follow the slop of the object. If it's not too severe you would not have to adjust the letters too much. You can taper a line of text on CorelDraw and probably end up with less work than trying to design something in 3D.
You can engrave pens with a small vertical rotary table and tailstock and by making the rotary axis one of the XY pair. You just draw the artwork/text onto a flat surface that is the same size as the circumference. The trick is you have to set your machine calibration (steps per unit) up to be what the circumference is. I had a formula over my little engraving machine that let me just put in the cylinder diameter and it told me the number of steps per inch (based on the rotary table gear ratio). Takes 15 seconds in MACH to change an axis calibration. I needed to move the surface of the object the right distance. It worked very well and I could engrave a flourish design around the pencil and it would meet up perfectly. One thing I did learn is you really need a floating head and depth control nose piece to get decent cuts. Just depending on everything to be perfectly horizontal and round would end in disappointment. |