Excellent work Jan, my congratulations.

Tweakie.

Thanks for sharing! Are you using the Parallel Port plugin? I have a machine controlled by Pokeys which I am interested to be able to do impact engraving on. Trying to work out a way to do this. How are you doing this?

Dan

Dan , a lot of work,yes you can use the plugin that is available some pages before this , i can use the 1.2 version, but I use a version that kazuki Tomura did , It is a version of the same, it has some nice improving , he uses for laser, but you can use it with impact.
Diferently from tweakie I use a lever , but the principle is the same , although what moves on my device is the coil, the magnets stays static.
It's very useful to use because you can use the machine as a router or as impact, you can see the spindle on my machine, just behind the impacter.
here a print screen on tomuras ( tom-tom) plugin.
Notice that my mach is registered and i made a skin for it in portuguese

Some other info;
Open in PSP the picture , make a mask around it and pitch it black around, increase contrast and use filters to show up details ( i use sharpmore) , make the image as grayscale and after  bitmap and 250( you can decrease or increase to match the measure of the image) pixels per inch.
Adjust the size in the plugin to match your granite , use a powerfull cpu, i use a I5 , with 6 gb , and a 2 gb video board , if possible use a solid state hd , it tooks seconds to load the image.
The most long work took me 7 hours, but since i have a machine with servos i let it run during the night.
The impacter i use a 24 volts , variable voltage , i generally use from 12 to 16 volts on the impacter.
I use the pin 8 to impact, just put it as digital trigger...and the signal i put on a common driver , those that they use on arduino, you can find it easilly on aliexpress,  so, i have a power source 24 volts x 5a , a dc-dc regulator , and a step motor driver , detail: jump the input of signal and direction , and jump the output, the two coil output a- and B- together and a+ and B+ together , as you have impact on your impacter you can adjust it through the dc-dc regulator

Thanks for the detailed reply Jan. Where can the Tomtom plugin be downloaded/purchased?

Dan

Directly with him.
I will ask if he allows me to share.
But as Said the impact plugin that is the key of this discussion Works as fine.

Art's plugin won't work, to the best of my knowledge, with any controller other than the printer port driver, as it is hard coded into the motion planer.

Dan

I ama now trying GRBL , that seems to handle usb in full . I ain't got fully satisfied yet , specially when you have high detailed pics , but it seems that is an unsoluble affair since you have the persistance of the coil movement, you have to be satisfied with the slowness of any impacter.
\it is the same as you have a strobo light...you will only see the strobo effect after a certain frequency, above that frequency you know it is still blinking, but your eyes will see a plain light.
It is the same with the impacters,you know the pulses are being sent,but the impacter has not enough speed to return to the position above the material,and ,combined to the feed rate ,you cant get it over 300 mm per minute on engraving and 3000 mm on blank areas.
I just made a symbol of Rzeczpospolita Polska ,just 100 x100 mm and took about 20 minutes.

Can you estimate the max frequency of the solenoid? 

Dan

about 50 hz.
I guess this is the max frequency I can get.
Although I think 30 hz has a better finish.
I usually leave about 0.3 mm of gap between diamond tip and the material.
It was quite difficult in the begining but now i can get better results.