Many, many thanks to Andrea (Robotmar), who has provided me with a couple of his magnets, I have now started out on the road of Impact Engraving.
It is extremely slow at 300mm/min compared with the laser but as nothing can catch fire (unlike the laser) the machine can be left unattended to just get on with the job. The initial results are extremely promising and now I have produced a “standard”, with which to compare my results, I can perhaps experiment with some different settings and magnet drive configurations.
Andrea has discovered a good combination here :- the type of magnet, impacting the work on the return (spring) stroke and using one pole (phase) of a bipolar stepper motor driver as the power source. His method works beautifully and at the moment it is hard to see just where, or even if, any improvements to the system could possibly be made. Excellent work Andrea.
Something unexpected about this process is the sound – it sounds just like someone using a typewriter, an unusual sound to come from my CNC and a sound like I have not heard in years.
There is lots for me to learn here and I will post further results as I proceed.
If anyone else out there is using Art’s Impact/Laser plugin for impact work please let us know just how you are getting on with it and perhaps post some pictures of your work. Some information on your magnet and the drive source used would also be good.
Tweakie.