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Plastic tag engraving – novice advice please
Good day to the forum from St. Lucia in the West Indies.
Engraved plastic labels have always pleased me. They give a professional finish to whatever I am working on: switch panel, boat engine room etc. OK, that’s my excuse for my recent purchase of a Scott SM100B on eBay. I have also ordered some plastic laminate sheets in different colours. I would appreciate advice on the following:
1. There is no manual with the Scott engraver although it does appear fairly intuitive. Any advice or how-to’s?
2. I need to cut the plastic laminate to size, and I don’t yet have a shear. I do have a fairly well equipped metal working shop with a band-saw, but this will not give those nice straight edges. Is there an way I can score and break the sheets?
3. I believe I can use my miniature vertical mill as a beveling machine. What RPM do engraving and beveling cutters turn at?
4. Anything else you can think of?
If I have posted this to the wrong forum, please direct me to somewhere more appropriate.
T.I.A.
Mike -
3 Replies
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Why not use the engraver to cut the blanks out?
Only draw back it will leave an edge the angle of your cutter.
RPM is quite fast for plastics and the like.. -
Feed rate and cutter speed high, and if you have the ability to vacume the chips as you cut, it will make the job much easier. Not so sure about the machine you have as the spindle size will control the choice of cutters. Larger spindles are able to take parallel milling tools that will cut perfect edges.
Most laminated plastics (shear or saw) will snap when cold, but at room temp (your temps!!) will just bend. Trafolite (saw cut) is brittle, ideal for panels but not ideal for key fobs.
If they are for applied lables then the standard cutter will do the bevelling for you, just ake the outline a final deeper cut, and all you need is a pair of tin snips to finish the cuts off.
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Thanks to all who have replied so far – food for thought there. I still have a problem cutting the laminate sheets as my machine is strictly a tag engraver and only accepts pieces/strips max 3" wide. I shall experiment with scoring.
My vertical mill is continuously variable from 0 to 5,000 rpm and can hold anything from parallel-sided cutters to very small burrs. I will experiment there too.
Thanks again for the input,
Mike
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