can someone help with suppliers of engraving machine?

[Rodney Gold]

Ideally a small machine like a Roland PNC 2300a or a EGX 300 will do , perhaps even one of their mickey mousier typer engravers would work tho they are a little puny. tou need a computerised machine ideally , tho a manual pantograph will work albeit it will take ages to do any production.
The question you ask is hugely broad and my best suggestion is to go to a engraving machine supplier near you and tell him what you want to do and take it from there.
Pricing can be anywhere , but we bought our small roland for about 1800 quid second hand ,and it paid for itself in one job.
http://www.rolanddga.com , go look under engravers for the machines and browse the site under “support” as well , there is a guide to engraving for profit etc. There is even an engraving forum (which is totally useless anyway.)
Many other machines apart from the roland available as well , the roland is just easy to use , it comes with Dr engrave and is fairly sophisticated if you want it to be.
Sophisticated engraving software like engravelab , artcam , mastercam , type 3 etc can be VERY expensive , try get something that either comes with decent software or doesnt need a program like those to drive it (We actually use signlab with the engraving modules) – you will need something real simple for your application.

[Darrell Wootton]

Rodney, thanks for the advise.

Daz…

[David Smith]

Hello Daz,

Try Suregrave, 0191 4174505, http://www.suregrave.com and Mastergrave 01234 218226, http://www.mastergrave.co.uk.
Both supply machines from small to large and the materials you would need.

David

[John Singh]

Interesting you use Signlab for engraving Rodney
I presume it must work very well for you (otherwise I know you would have opted for another)

John

[Rodney Gold]

Signlab is really only useful to generate tool paths and for milling/engraving strategy , and this it does VERY VERY well. It also has some single line engraving fonts, a serializatioj and badge feature etc. We design in other packages and use signlab as front end to the engravers. Other then that , my biggest moan with signlab is the really poor screen resolution compared to Corel etc. So far no one has been able to tell me how to get it better.
We do use other stuff like Artcam and Mastercam for more specific or complex type stuff (like 3d)
When we got our first computerised engraver , back in 84 (a 1m x 500mm ISEL) there were no engraving packages and we used to use Autocad , I wrote a post processor to interface to the controller box of the ISEL which we still use today. It’s not user friendly , but it works a charm.

[mark walker]

Hello all, I use signlab too for my engraving, have found it brilliant for control of the tool. I don’t do 3d stuff so its all I need. I used it to control a shopbot machine I had a while back and produced letters full sheet width (1220mm) on some jobs in acrylic and mdf. the tile feature works a treat for lager stuff. I routed a stone effect wall that went into a play area in mcdonalds in manchester, the walls where then painted and sealed, it looked fantastic. I have to agree with Rodney about the screen display though, corel and others make it look poor, the actual output is something else altogether.
Cheers, Mark. 😀

[Brian Maher]

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