Making a drag engraver for my DIY CNC

In this video I will show what I do with my broken end mills, how I reuse them. I have quite a few of these and decided to make some use of them, giving them a second life as drag engraving needles, scratching the surface. I simply designed and made one out of a 3D printed bearing holder, a linear bearing and an ER11 collet chuck holder with a 100mm long 8mm diameter shaft, a spiral spring, two washers and a locking ring with set screw. Easy, simple and very fast design and make. I will use it for engraving very fine lines, drawings and text into plastic and metal. In fact, my initial tests show excellent results even for steel. Of course, acrylic is no match for this tool, it is engraving very nicely, without any trouble even with a very light down press.

I will in some of the next video show actual use of this tool also, in this one you can see a quick example at the end, but only in acrylic.

Enjoy, and please don't forget to subscribe to my videos.

[justintime]

Thank you for the idea. As it happened, I had all the parts already and all I had to do is 3d print the one part and that's it. Way cheaper than the store bought one!

[cmguitar]

Very elegant solution. What software did you use to post the code for machining? Thanks!

[ELTABULLO]

Excellent work, one question: what depth would you recommend for glass?

[palszedlay]

Szépnapot. Hihetetlen éles és részletes a gravírtűről készült felvétel. Szeretném megkérdezni milyen mikroszkóppal készült és milyen kamerával? Az én monitoromon a 0, 02mm távolság 60mm így ez 3000X-es nagyítás. Lenyűgöző a minősége.

[racket]

I want to engraver soft metals using these drag engraver techniques. What CNC router do you recommend I use?