[tommylight]

Hi.
Last week i have built this piece of stone engraving machinery, so here are some pictures in glass, ceramic, and plastic (laptop lid). comments and critique welcomed.
regards,
tom

[Dolphin USA]

Just curious what the machine time on these were? I am very impressed with the detail. What software did you use for the engraving? :cheers: Great Job!!

[tommylight]

Here are some pic on black granite, but the piece was small and cracked. I will try to find a bigger piece and by the looks of it, it will look quite nice.
As for the work times, they depend on a lot of things, like the speed and the step-over, so for the girl in glass it took 3.5 hours and the size is 28X38 cm, the kid on ceramic tile took nearly 2 hours for a 20X30cm etc.
On a side note, i am selling this one since i already started a much bigger one and i have assembled a much bigger head unit :cheers: .
regards
Tom

[marktill]

Nice work its good to see what can can be dune , what soft ware are you using ? and how long did it take for you to get to grips with it.

[tommylight]

Hi,
The software is old dos written by some Dj something or another, but it is very simple and easy to use so it took about 15 minutes to figure out everything about it ( most of the things in settings are backwards so a bigger number is a lighter shade or slower movement), as far as building the machines, the small one took me 8 full days and the bigger one ( i've built another one since my last post here with dimensions 100X50cm or 40X20 inch working area ) took me full 5 days.i have them on sale so if anyone is interested just drop me a PM.
Thanks for your comments and feedback.
Regards,
Tom

[sparkgirl]

tommylight, that looks like a very cool and useful build.

Will your machines be set up as compatible with common motion control software, or are they designed specifically for the DOS program you mentioned -- or -- is the DOS program purely for design and another means of motion control utilized? Please forgive me if these questions are a lack of my reading or viewing all. I just hopped on to the thread, thought cool!, wanted to acknowledge your work and consider feasibility of adding a 3rd table to my shop. I do a lot with glass/stone/marble, etc. but currently more with the CO2 laser than the router/engraver. The glass/stone dust is really hard on my laser though.

[tommylight]

Hello Sparkgirl,
No, yes and no. They ( now i have 2 finished and working, the second being a 100x50cm work area) are set up as a full quadrature control and can be used with Linuxcnc with a lot of tweaking of .ini files, but the software for them is way simpler to use so why bother ( although i did bother ) The software takes a .pcx picture file and controls the machine directly, it just needs the dimensions and how much pressure to put on the head depending on the contrast you want, also it has a step-over setting, that's about it.
Also i have seen lasers and the resulting picture on granite so take it from me, this is in a different league, it is much brighter and more pleasing to the eye. I will take some better pictures whenever i catch a warmer day to go in the workshop ( i really hate cold, i can stand it quite good, but given the choice i would make it summer al my life, so find me a way to get my beehind to California or Florida. normal winter temp. here are -10 to -20 right now -9 in centigrade so in Fahrenheit it is like -100 ).
If you feel adventurous, i will help you build one or if you feel like parting with some cash i can give it to my brother and he can mail it to you when he gets back to U.S.
Anyway, thank you very much for kind words, you are profoundly welcome.

[doorknob]

Do you use a diamond-coated engraving bit or something else?

It looks great...

[tommylight]

Do you use a diamond-coated engraving bit or something else?

It looks great...

Yes, and they are 2 euro a piece, sufficient for 6-10 pictures depending on the amount of whites, so it beats the laser on the cost per picture front, too. The only advantage the laser has is the speed but not by much.
Regards,
Tom

[tommylight]

Here are some more pictures and some close-ups of the head units on both machines.
Hope someone can use them for their own builds, and if you need more info, please ask.
Regards,
Tom

[SPC-laser]

really great job,it's so cool,i wonder what's the price? is it expensive ?:cheers:

[tommylight]

really great job,it's so cool,i wonder what's the price? is it expensive ?:cheers:

Seling them for 2200 euro small one and 3200 big one, all inclusive, laptop software machine ready to plug and play.

The cost of building is not high, but making a reliable head unit is a p.i.t.a man, takes me 2 full days to make one, it is constantly under stress during work so it needs to be robust.
regards,
Tom

[andrewh]

hi tommylight how is the head driven by the dos program ? pwm from the grayscale values in the picture etc.

would love to try making one myself any more info would be wonderfull

[tommylight]

hi tommylight how is the head driven by the dos program ? pwm from the grayscale values in the picture etc.

would love to try making one myself any more info would be wonderfull

Exactly ! And it has 2 different values for it for every single line one for each direction.

[andrewh]

why 2 values for each line in each direction Tommylight ?
i would have thourght the grayscale values for the picture would be maped against the 0-100% pwm output with maybe the darkest parts being maped starting at say 10% to the lightest being 100% presure, that would allow for the head to float above via the spring if no grinding was needed at that piont of the picture. could you clarify a bit more!
Also is the Dos program you discribe still avalable somewhere.
On my machine i am using mach3 and hope to make this head as an addon to fit in the router positon. and maybe use the spindle pwm control to drive the head if i can genarate Gcode from the grayscale with S values instead of Z position values, does this sound if i am thinking right ?

thanks for your previous reply.

Andrewh.

[Dragonfly]

Is the DOS software written by you? Or any link to it if it is free?
I've seen a Serbian company selling such machines and it seems with the same DOS software.
Here
http://www.acmetek.biz/

[tommylight]

I will try to explain in detail later.
As for software, found it somewhere on the net but i don't remember the exact name of the file, am busy, will try to find it later. Sorry gota work, but thank you for your interest and support, much appreciated.
Tom

[tommylight]

why 2 values for each line in each direction Tommylight ?
i would have thourght the grayscale values for the picture would be maped against the 0-100% pwm output with maybe the darkest parts being maped starting at say 10% to the lightest being 100% presure, that would allow for the head to float above via the spring if no grinding was needed at that piont of the picture. could you clarify a bit more!
Also is the Dos program you discribe still avalable somewhere.
On my machine i am using mach3 and hope to make this head as an addon to fit in the router positon. and maybe use the spindle pwm control to drive the head if i can genarate Gcode from the grayscale with S values instead of Z position values, does this sound if i am thinking right ?

thanks for your previous reply.

Andrewh.

It does exactly what you describe in the first part, except it does that twice, once going in one direction doing a line then it moves the other axis half the step-over that is adjustable and uses another value (can be adjusted same as the main line) going back, then again the next line etc. So every line it draws is made out of 2 lines than can have different values. What it does for the picture is, it's more detailed and has more contrast and is more appealing to the eye. Found out through experimenting that the best setting for the second value is 2 numbers under the main line ( uses some weird settings from 1 to 8, 1 being the most pressure or the whitest line).
As for mach3 i dont use it, actually i ended up hating it badly from the 2 close encounters with it, and since i haven't used win@#$%$#@ in a looooooong time (over 8 years), you might say i am biased, but trust me i am not, on the contrary i spent quite some time fiddling with mach3 and found it quite impressive as far as the settings go, but the main screen is absolutely hideous, there are so many things that normal users will never use, and the worst thing is that i had it set up for millimetres and loaded a file that used inch and it never went back to using mm, ever, had to do a fresh install of windows and everything to have it back to mm. and some other things..............


I did a search on the net for the software, but i could not find it, i could not find the web site for it at all, by the looks of it that firm went down for quite some time now and i doubt it will ever come back. Try searching for cnc software for dos, i did not try, maybe you can find it still buried somewhere, that is how i found it, but it was a zip file.

And lastly, the idea of using s code for z is cool so let me know if you manage to do something with it, i went the route of programming Linuxcnc to do the PWM and it works, but doing the code for it was near impossible.

This goes for everyone interested in building the head unit: I will try to help as much as i can so here is a start: find two DC motors, one for the spindle and one for the pressure. The one for pressure has to be as slim as possible and be fairly strong for direct drive ( the head mounted on HiWin rails on my pictures ) or a smaller one with 1:2 or max 1:3 reduction ( the other head on my pics ).
sleep, now, 3 am here...

[Dragonfly]

On my machine i am using mach3 and hope to make this head as an addon to fit in the router positon. and maybe use the spindle pwm control to drive the head if i can genarate Gcode from the grayscale with S values instead of Z position values, does this sound if i am thinking right ?

thanks for your previous reply.

Andrewh.

I was thinking about a possible solution with a different mechanical setup If one makes an attachment for a CNC router where the engraving spindle is hinge mounted and spring loaded, then pressure can be modulated by setting the Z zero close to the surface and using the Z axis movement. Like when one makes a lithophane. Adjusting the spring pre-tension will result in different pressure force with one and the same Z movement for different material.

[andrewh]

Thanks dragonfly and tommylight for your input. The spring idea sounds interesting as that would make the mechanics easy ! But would that give the same result as the pwm motor drive would or would the pressure vary unevenly - none linearly as the z axis moves. I am not sure my z axis would have the resolution it has a 84 step/ mm setup but that drives a rack of nylon and I think the backlash could be greater that what I would need for the picture definition. Ok for mdf doors I have been playing with so far! The picture effect is wonderfull.
As for the PCM from spindle I think it may work, as I have seen others using it for co2 laser contrast control not sure if it would be fast enough. Hope to get time and try it.
If the spring idea would work that makes it my idea of choice as its easy to make and I could make an adaptor to fit where the router fits the z axis.

Any thoughts would be great as its fantastic talking to like minded people with home built machines.

Andrews