How small is small?

[svenakela]

DARN! That's amazing.

[rhundl]

We just buy them, you can get them from micro 100 as specified earlier in the post. Also Harvey Tools sales them. Google them... you can buy them in a few different points. I think the last one we tried had a .005 cutting radius on the bottom. We do not do much of it anymore. but if everything is really flat we had great success

[Matt29c]

How small is small? Well its up to you really. Some people think less than 1cm is small, some think less than 1mm and still yet some even go smaller to the nanometer scale. For the nanometer scale the people that do it use and tungsten rod drawn out to the atom level to make a very sharp very strong cutting tool, but the results you get are 95nm and smaller usually done in silicon. Ie. 45nm Core Duo Intel CPUs and the 55nm clock carved onto a single sliver of silicon and painstakingly brought together. Basically to cut something really small you need something harder than the material you are cutting ground or drawn out to a fine point that can hold the edge without alot of work keeping it sharp. Tungsten and Titanium alloys are the best for aerospace and high tech stuff but if you are doing this at home Id just use a very strong steel and case harden it after you ground the bit you wanted.

Good luck with it, hope this helps a little.

[Big S]

http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/040701.html

This is pretty small stuff

Shannon.

[KPyro]

I'm in the ranks of those who make their own tools. Take an old tool, and grind a simple conical point. I use a 5C collet for this, in a workhead on a tool grinder. I slip a thin piece of brass shimstock under one side of the collet to decenter the tool. I make a note of which way the eccenticity lies. Then, change the approach of the grinding wheel to bring it in from the side and grind half way across the cone, forming a spade. I position the tool for this in such a manner that the eccenticity of the cone creates a wee bit of relief for the cutting edge. It is a physical impossibility to have a point on center with relief behind the cutting edge at the tip. But a thousandth or so eccentricity seems to help enough for the engraving I have to do.

Do you have any pics of this or just some drawings I would like to try it but I am not getting the picture of your setup?
Thanks