Etching Or Engraving

There is some confusion between etching and engraving. Etching is where you use acid or other corrosive material to mark the object you want to get marked. The resist material is used to mark out the letters or logo protecting some areas from the corrosive substance. Mechanical means are used with engraving either by hand or machine. The object – leather, glass or metal or what ever is marked with a tip of diamond or carbide.

Engraving and Printing

Cuts are made into the hard surfaces on the object. Artisans would cut into metal with hand tool cutters on things like plates for printing, money included.. The cuts would have ink pressed in to them. After cleaning off the top surface a press would be used to press paper onto it and into the design to transfer the image onto the paper. Tne name for that process is intaglio printing. Now when people refer to engraving they would be talking about either using an electric hand tool or there are computer programmed tools which do the work. CNC engraving tools are the ones controlled by computer programs.

Engraving Tools – Small hand Tools

Dremel and Inscriblio engraver tools are popular and you can also buy cheap perhapos poorer quality tools manufactured in China. The type and model you get will be determined by the amount of engraving you want to do. For a few small bits of engraving then a cheap model will be the best option. Could be that you want to identify you property with your details in case it goes missing. Not sure if it is a good idea to subject something delicate and expensive like a camera to the vibration you get from an engraver.

Keep The Cutting Cool

There are various engraving machine tools that will work on lots of different types of materials, such as glass, tile, bone and wood. Do your carving, grinding, sanding and etching with those tools. Long lasting tools if you go by the manufacturers claims when used with coolant. They will wear out pretty quickly without coolant.

Diamond Point Engraving Tools

When you have a Dremel 290 Engraver you can get an additional diamond point for the tool. Use this point for continuous duty or commercial work. Excellent too if you want to do decorative engraving. It works on steel, chrome, titanium, granite, and other hard substrates. The original engraving tool that comes installed in the engraver is not so tough. Get the diamond pointed tools for they are better for the hard materials than the carbide bits.

CNC Engraving Machines

Of course you might be more interested in the CAD CAM machines that will engrave substrates with barcodes, company logos, text and all sorts of shapes. Upload either vector graphics or bitmaps into the software and you will be ready to set up the job. You can even get specialist machines that will engrave direct on to parts that are cylindrical. For the more exact or precision work this will be a best option. You might also consider looking at the laser engraving options.

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