I recently did a test using the shopbot for clay etching. I am not sure of the potential for this technique, but here it is.
It went like this.
I turned a 1/2 inch shaft for the back of a standard JAcobs 3/8 drill chuck as a sort of universal shopbot chuck. (believe it or not, it runs true, I checked it with a dial this morning)
I sharpened a piece of heavy misic wire to a fine point.
I scanned in a line drawing, converted it to a vector with a ras/vec program, and made a shopbot toolpath file using Vector. (no Z depth)
I rolled out a clay slab "accuratly" to a quarter inch.
I lowered the Z to what looked like 1/8 into the clay and zeroed the Z.
I set the move speet to 3.5 for the X,Y and 2 for the Z.
Five minutes later it was done.
Results:
Very sucessful plot with even and accurate lines.
Problems:
I had to stop and resume several times as the music wire stylus kept getting covered in dry clay.