Hood,
How well will PhotoVcarve capture an outline for single line engraving.
Here is an example from a different program.

RICH

Hi Rich, wouldnt do that at all without major tweaking of the photo as it is just meant to reproduce the image. Obviously if you had a line drawing thats what it would see and spit out the code for.

Hood

That photo/v carve is nice but I can't afford it for a free project, you know what I mean? Rich, I'll try it. Thanks. Mike

Here's a scroll test for you to play with.

RICH

That photo/v carve is nice but I can't afford it for a free project, you know what I mean?

Totally understand, thats why I said I would need your feeds and speeds and angle of cutter

One thing though is you have to have a spindle with no end float if doing a small V Carve like this as in the pic I attached the max depth is only 0.4mm so any end float and it would come out crap.
Hood

See IF you can find a copy of the scene as a coloring book page. Then convert it to lines with Inkscape(free)

http://www.patrioticcoloringpages.com/memorial-day/009-iwo-jima-picture-to-color.html

Just a thought, (;-) TP

Hood, my machine is a home built device, a 3 axis sherline clone that I put japan stepper motors on and built a device to hold a dremel hand held rotary saw as my spindle. It spins at 5, 10, 15k. I generally use this thing to engrave text only, not anythign like this. I run my feeds around 10-15ipm and fine tune with Mach3 as required per job.

See IF you can find a copy of the scene as a coloring book page. Then convert it to lines with Inkscape(free)

http://www.patrioticcoloringpages.com/memorial-day/009-iwo-jima-picture-to-color.html

Just a thought, (;-) TP

Mike,
Appreciate the enthusiasm,but, do you really feel confortable achieving the engraving on that firearm with your machine?

RICH

I sure do, I've done a number of simpler images and hundreds of lines of text with it, I know it sounds somewhat rough but it works suprisingly well and it's quite rigid for what it is. I take it nice and easy and for something like this I'd definately practice on a junk gun. I'm a full time gunsmith at a gunshop (www.newmellegunshop.com) and have a number of junkers to practice on. I also build my own line of sound suppressors (www.amermfg.com) and primarily engrave text on them. I also use chemical etching from Martronics but it works best on stainlesses. It's real touchy on bluing and this particular one is a blued receiver.

Here is the coloring book version. Seems like the wind is blowing in a different direction....
Something to experiment with.....have fun,
RICH