Hello all,
We just purchased a mechanical engraver ( Roland EGX-30 Desktop Engraver ) and wanted to know what size cutter would be the best all purpose cutter to use with this.

We plan on using this for plastic and anodized aluminum for craft fairs and such.

Thanks everyone.

Kerri

Cutters for plastic and aluminum are very different. For plastics you will need a FLX or ACR cutter, (ACR stands for acrylic). They are almost identical, but after cutting just a few names into acrylic, the cutter is not sharp enough to use on flexible engraving stock anymore. It will however still work on acrylic for some time.

Aluminum requires a BAL, (Brass and Aluminum), cutter, or a diamond drag, or a diamond burnisher. You would be very unhappy with the results using a carbide burnisher. Carbide and aluminum do not like each other.

Philadelphia, PA (Really Bensalem)

When you finally understand it completely... it changes.

Thanks for the help guys. Can you tell me where I can read about which cutters to get for which materials, when to engrave verses diamond drag, etc. All the basics of mecanical engraving...we've been lasering but this is all new to us.

thanks

If you have a good selection of engraving fonts, you can reduce the amount of cutters you will initially need. When I started out I had about 4 cutter sizes and by selecting a single line, 3 line or 5 line version of the same font, allowed me to engrave quite a good span of engraving sizes. Also if your software allows use of truetype fonts you can use these and create a fill. Downside of not having a good selection is that your engraving time will increase as will cutter wear (often dramatically).

There are some resources about such as "The Engravers bible" by Rich Zydonik which is a basic guide to Mechanical engraving. I bought a copy recently - it would of been really useful to me about 2 years ago - now with knowledge gained through experience it still has some useful info. I believe there is also a DVD/Video available.
Regards

Andrew