Rotary Engraving on a VMC

Pete Deal · Jan 23, 2017

I have had a gorton rotary engraver for years and have done some really nice work with it. Nothing too fancy but still nice looking engraving. I guess I have become sort-of an engraving snob. I now have an older Brother cnc machine and have been figuring all that out. I am using Fusion 360 with it and this weekend did some engraving. I think the CAM, which is HSMWorks, with Fusion is really great so far but am not real impressed with the engraving. It just does not offer too many options and seems to always want to work with Truetype fonts which winds up making huge piles of code just for a few letters.

I have noticed on here before (years ago) some people were using MillWrite software for engraving. I downloaded the sample program and it does look much better with various font options and lots of tool path options. Cost is $400. Anybody else using this these days?

The other thing that surprised me was that all these engraving programs seem to only use G00 and G01 codes. Maybe it is just my post or but it sure seems like it would be more efficient if they used some arcs.

bjorn toulouse · Jan 23, 2017

I am NOT a user, but a couple of people I know have used this outfit's software with good results: http://www.2linc.com/

Might be worth a look.

Rex

LockNut · Jan 23, 2017

If you are doing simultaneous 4 axis, then you cannot use arcs. If you are just doing indexing and engraving flat surfaces then you can.

Paul

Pete Deal · Jan 23, 2017

Right now just flat surfaces

Matt@RFR · Jan 23, 2017

Pete Deal said:
Right now just flat surfaces

I'm betting Paul thought that because you are calling it Rotary Engraving, you meant you were on a 4th axis (rotary). Just call it engraving. That may help you here and with google searches.

Atomkinder · Jan 23, 2017

The Engrave toolpath in HSM/Fusion is more like V-Carve, not a Trace style toolpath so it will attempt to create sharp corners in text/geometry. Then also a factor is whether it's just a sketch or whether you've extruded the text into true solid geometry.

DavidScott · Jan 23, 2017

For production type single line engraving Fusion sucks, just my opinion. What I do is create single lines in the middle of the text, or offset the tool paths where possible, and use the Trace command. Where lines cross I break them at the intersection and then manually remove the code commanding the tool to lift between line segments to get what I want. There may be a better way of doing it in Fusion but I am not aware of it.

Atomkinder · Jan 23, 2017

Doug said:
For engraving on flat surfaces Millwrite will use arcs where possible.

In my limited testing of Fusion 360 I have not been able to get it to use arcs even where the cutter path is circular. There's a box to check in the post about using arcs, but I was never able to get it generate arcs in the code. Again, I'll emphasize, I'm not an experienced user of Fusion.

The post is not what determines arcs usage, merely when to linearize based on tolerance, or whether to use R or IJK (I never use the former anyway).

DavidScott said:
For production type single line engraving Fusion sucks, just my opinion. What I do is create single lines in the middle of the text, or offset the tool paths where possible, and use the Trace command. Where lines cross I break them at the intersection and then manually remove the code commanding the tool to lift between line segments to get what I want. There may be a better way of doing it in Fusion but I am not aware of it.

Again though, Engrave is NOT for single-line engraving. Trace works fine, albeit the linking is sometimes not great. The bigger issue IMO is not having a supplied single-line font that converts to simple sketch geometry but that's sort of a different complaint. Supposedly the sketch engine is up for a lot of work this year.

Pete Deal · Jan 23, 2017

I found a single line true type font that someone created for use in a CAM system (CAM BAM stick fonts), loaded it into my pc, and tried it but being a single line font it is just a line and won't extrude and therefore won't engrave. As far as using trace on that I have not tried that.

It is interesting that the code it generates engraving the simplest font I could find, courier, does generate a single line tool path but still is a little wacky. It generates not only x,y moves but quite a few x,y,z moves as part of the tool path.

Rex I will look at the 2L inc software. I saw that but did not try a demo. The MillWrite looks pretty promising.

If I get one of these and generate separate code for engraving it would be nice to be able to somehow integrate it with the rest of the code for that side of the part so I don't have to do two separate programs for a side if this is possible.

DavidScott · Jan 23, 2017

When I have used trace to engrave I haven't had any extra Z axis moves so check your settings. I also imported some single line fonts from CamBam, didn't work for me at all.

A week ago I did 7 sweeping letters around .15" tall with .0001" tolerance and the code was around 325 lines without removing all of the extra Z axis moves to the clearance plane. Actually all the letters were spline curves that I created on a canvas image to emulate a customers logo. For me Fusion can single line engrave well enough that I am not looking for something else, but I don't do much engraving.

Atomkinder · Jan 23, 2017

Doug said:
Okay, here's what I just did... Keep in mind my usage of Fusion is only for my curiosity (I have a system I'm very familiar with).

Drew a rectangle and extruded to -.5".
Used sketch to draw a 1" diameter circle on surface, center point and diameter method to draw circle.

In CAM, used trace with the circle as geometry and selected a tool.
Simulated okay.
In the post I said "yes" to "use radius" (thinking that meant arcs).

Code generated with about 150 line segments.

So, how do you make it use arcs?

Use 2D Contour, turn Compensation Type to Off. Trace is good for some things (3D deburring at under 45° sloped edges for instance, or back deburring with a lollipop mill if you want to take the time and effort) but really bad at others.

Edit: oh and turn the Lead-in and Lead-out off.

Now what the post WILL do is turn those three arcs into a single arc if you use IJK and the post is set up to do 360° arcs:

%
O01001 (Temp)
(T5 - 1/4 4FL Ball EM - ZMIN=-0.01)
G90 G94 G17
G20
M31
G53 G0 Z0.

(2D Contour1)
N100 T5 M6
S8000 M3
#102=32. (Finish)
#103=32. (Entry)
#108=10.667 (Plunge)
G54
G187 P3
G0 X1. Y0.
G43 Z1. H5
G0 Z0.1
G1 Z0.05 F#103
Z-0.01 F#108
G3 I-1. J0. F#102
G0 Z1.

M5
G53 G0 Z0.
X0.
G53 Y0.
M30

%

Mtndew · Jan 24, 2017

bjorn toulouse said:
I am NOT a user, but a couple of people I know have used this outfit's software with good results: http://www.2linc.com/

Might be worth a look.

Rex

We've had this software for a little over 5 years now. Not the 4axis version just the Pro 1 version for serial numbers.
While it will do what you want it to do, it's not very user friendly and is pretty clunky.
That being said, the price isn't bad for what it does.

Pete Deal · Jan 24, 2017

I found the Millwright demo pretty easy to figure out. It is a little bit of a home brew user interface but very simple. I am leaning toward this one. I looked at the 2L inc video and it does not look as good to me. I have read in some old PM posts where it will also engrave on a cylinder. I do have a 4th axis so that would be a good thing too.

Most everyone in the old posts I saw who had Millwrite liked it.

Mtndew · Jan 24, 2017

Pretty sure that 2linc will let you demo their software. Can't hurt.

garyhlucas · Jan 24, 2017

We have CamBam and the stick fonts work really well with CamBam. CamBam also has a Jpg to G-code that does a pretty decent job considering what you are trying to do. We also have a spring loaded engraving tool fro the 2Linc guys that works very well when we engrave thin stainless nameplates that are wavy. Also there is a wrapper plugin I believe to allow engraving on a cylinder. At $150 for a Cam program that is quite capable and easy to use, plus does the engraving quite well it is pretty hard to go wrong. If I want to engrave on a 3D surface I can do that too. Generate the text and project it onto the 3D and the resulting polylines give you a 3D toolpath.

D.D.Machine · Jan 25, 2017

millwrite works GREAT ,, I find it really simple to use but you can do engraving on about any shape you want and has a LOT of fonts ,,, Its a FULL 2 1/2 axis cam software and that part also works good but I find onecnc better for the parts I have been doing .

Pete Deal · Jan 26, 2017

D.D. Machine I saw one of your old posts and tried to PM you, your box is full. Anyway, I just want it for engraving so will probably get MillWrite soon. I will stay with Fusion 360 cam for other stuff. I like what I have tried of MillWrite. In another post you said you insert the Millwrite generated program into your main program. How does this work? Can you offset the line numbers generated by Millwrite?

D.D.Machine · Jan 27, 2017

pete
I just put onecnc code over to notepad and cut and paste it there or just do it at the control ... I like the control way better in that it lets me run just that part of the engraving on a junk part ...

Pete Deal · Feb 7, 2017

I went ahead and bought the Millwrite software. I redid the parts that I had done using Fusion360 engraving and I am much more satisfied with the result. The guy who writes it is very helpful, I had to tweak the post a little. The software is easy to use. If you care about doing nice engraving this is not a bad way to go. It has drilling and pocketing capability too. For panel work it would probably be all the cam you would need.

Rotary Engraving on a VMC

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