Butt cap engraving
- Thread starter PDX
- Start date
Yes.
They can laser engrave anything you want.
They can laser engrave anything you want.
Old school, I use a 3D Gorton pantograph to engrave some stuff, have looked at lasers.
My take is it depends on the shop and how you want it engraved. A top shop with a 4th axis can probably do anything right around the butt. A small shop with a ~$200 laser & no other live fixturing can probably only do flat work, or work in an area small enough radially to count as flat (say 1/4" around the circumference). Or a line that is not too wide, straight along the cap parallel to the stick center. A manual index fixture could be used 1 letter at a time around the butt, just like a non-interconnected fixture on a manual panto.
Lasers sure have changed the possibilites, though!
smt
My take is it depends on the shop and how you want it engraved. A top shop with a 4th axis can probably do anything right around the butt. A small shop with a ~$200 laser & no other live fixturing can probably only do flat work, or work in an area small enough radially to count as flat (say 1/4" around the circumference). Or a line that is not too wide, straight along the cap parallel to the stick center. A manual index fixture could be used 1 letter at a time around the butt, just like a non-interconnected fixture on a manual panto.
Lasers sure have changed the possibilites, though!
smt
Old school, I use a 3D Gorton pantograph to engrave some stuff, have looked at lasers.
My take is it depends on the shop and how you want it engraved. A top shop with a 4th axis can probably do anything right around the butt. A small shop with a ~$200 laser & no other live fixturing can probably only do flat work, or work in an area small enough radially to count as flat (say 1/4" around the circumference). Or a line that is not too wide, straight along the cap parallel to the stick center. A manual index fixture could be used 1 letter at a time around the butt, just like a non-interconnected fixture on a manual panto.
Lasers sure have changed the possibilities, though!
smt
Correct. If you can find a large enough shop then they'll have a 4 axis machine that can typically do it. I wanted to have stainless steel joints done this way much as Laser Art Engraving did for Joss back in the late 80's (I wish I still had their brochure.) The problem I ran into having cues done that way was the fixture to hold the cue in place. They didn't have anything that could hold a 29" cue so the alternative would be to have the butt cap turned to finish size and put it on one everything is complete and HOPE it all works. You might also look at directing your search to "laser engraving" specifically. I found a shop literally 3 minutes from my house that way.
I'm fortunate that I have the Storm CNC now. I just have to beg Bob Dzuricky to explain to me how he managed to get his G-Code to work for engraving his signiture.