Resolution

[Laff Riot]

I cannot envision having to scratch engrave anything more complicated than a dollar bill - how do I work backwards from the result to determine the type of motor and ballscrew I would need?
Is there a recognized calculation, or is this gut feeling?

range of applications - cutting PVC's .125 - .5", acrylics .125-.25, scratch engraving light metals, soft & hard wood milling up to 1".

Hoping to cutout aluminum, brass and other soft metals unless this bumps me up into the next bracket.

I am not looking for high speed - my intent is to have several machines dedicated to specific tasks.

[HuFlungDung]

Originally posted by Laff Riot I cannot envision having to scratch engrave anything more complicated than a dollar bill - snip- Hoping to cutout aluminum, brass and other soft metals unless this bumps me up into the next bracket.

Ya, I heard that $20.00 bills are the norm, so that would be bumping you up 3 brackets

[Laff Riot]

Yaknow I didn't even stop to think how that would sound

The company I work at did a million dollar bill - the one you can legally replicate - engraved in several different substrates as a promo trinket with our contact info on it.

It was the most detailed engraving I have had to do - so its the one I come back to for comparision.

And $20's are too obvious anyways. My favorite to date was the jeweler who minted his own casino coins. They ended up catching him when they wound up with more coins at count than they started with. Considering the number made to replace the ones carried out of the casino as trinkets plus the surplus.. thats one busy guy.

[HuFlungDung]

Anyways, to answer you seriously, you need an ultra high speed spindle to spin a small engraving tool at a decent speed to make some kind of a chip, instead of just mushing over a burr.

You actual feedrate would not be all that high, based on my experience (which is not all that much with engraving on a mill), I doubt that you would need much more than 10 inches per minute feedrate.

Bigger cutters can stand more feed pressure, so you need to determine what the largest cutter is that you will use, and even then, how much production per hour do you need to push past it?