Thanks to John and Jim for your recommendation on the fonts subject.. Most of our engraving is done with homemade, half round, conical cutters out of HSS. We use a 60 deg cutter with a .005 flat on the end for most work in plastic, anidized aluminum, brass, and stainless steel. Depth of around .005 for brass and SS to as much as .020 in plastic. Speeds for brass and plastic, 5000 RPM and around 3000 for SS. Feeds around 10-20 IPM for
brass and plastic, around 5 IPM in SS. Use a very shallow depth for anidized aluminum, otherwise the anizing will chip. For very detailed lettering and images in plastic, we might use a 20 deg cutter with barely any flat on the tip so that it cuts a path only a few thou wide on the part surface. With that we would probably use another cutter with a wide tip, maybe .010, for the roughing. With the former cutter, around .010 is deep, and 10 IPM is the limit. We know of another shop that uses ordinary center drills for engraving part numbers in aluminum. They run it at 10000 RPM and feed around 30-50 IPM. You can't go much more than .005 deep.
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