Sandstone engraving

[WayneHill]

Does anyone here have experience with engraving sandstone?

What is recommended for a tool bit and feed rates?

[coltons customs]

hi wayne

i suspect you are using a cnc to attempt this. is your rock actual sand stone or is it lime stone or flagstone lime stone will be more of a light tan almost white color and flagstone is naturally flat . if you are using actual sandstone all i can say is good luck i own a buisness in stone sign manufacturing and have tried using a cnc router to produce signs however sandstone is so soft and brittle with many impurities in the stone that create hard spots. from my experience i achieved about a 2 out of five success rate due to the bit passing the hard spots and then it would chunk out the design where it was soft. i use a diamond tool when i tried and an old medical blood pump to cool off the tool as the stone gets into everything i have completed many sandstone and other rock engravings and will tel you this go to a local sign supplier and have them cut the design into sandblast masking material it is made of rubber apply it to the rock by the way there are a few tricks for doing this feel free to email me if you wish to do it this way. and then use an abrasive blaster to engrave it depending on the size of the rock you may be able to fit in a blasting cabinet or one can be purchase very reasonable at a store such as harbor freight. hope i helped and not confused you also my website is www.coltonscustoms.com ther is a contacts link there use either one

Colton

[WayneHill]

Colton,

Thank you for the information. The sandstone is from a local quarry.

I will look for a stone that is not soft and does not have fine layers that could break. Depth of cut would be light .020" - .050".

http://www.napoleonstone.com/products.html

My mill is an Acra model converted to CNC. It has a DIY DeWalt 30K RPM trim router attachment for wood carving.

Looking to test graving on small flat sandstone for the experience. (Or frustration

Thank you,

Wayne

[coltons customs]

a soft stone is ok as long as it doesn't appear to flake very easy as far as tooling i use a sintered bit from gran quartz tooling in Georgia but a small diamond router will work for sandstone as it is a lot softer than granite etc i have had better luck at high rpm with about 8% load let mne know how your test runs i am always eager to learn more