I had a need to engrave metal on a project, and didn't have an engraving bit/stylus on hand, so I came up with this prototype fixture to attach my vibrating engraver to the SB.

After some testing, I found that feed speed and Z depth do make a slight difference on the mild steel I tested on, probably more so on softer metals like brass and aluminum. I haven’t tried a double pass to see what effect that will have yet. This particular engraver starts impacting the surface at about + .01 above the material surface, when it’s running, so I can set my engraver zero at +.01 and lower it from there to achieve the result that I want.



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SB made fixture to hold engraver



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Test run for feed and depth on mild steel



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I was surprised at how well this worked

I'm thinking this might be a useful tool to make plaques for special projects, or...

Note, I just used the Fender image/name for a test engraving. I had it on hand and it's detailed enough to show the engraver's potential. I’m not producing anything with this image - we'll, maybe a brass plaque detailing the restoration of a 60's era Fender amp that I just completed, hmm.