Best jewellery engraver entry level

[magicniner]

I have an IM3, it has a motor and does excellent deep rotary cut/milled engraving, the IM3 is a current model, £450 would be a good price with one font.
I have 4 or 5 Gravograph fonts which amount to more investment than the machine itself.
The IM3 is a 2D pantograph, any cut engraving is fixed depth, using an adjustable nose on the spindle, if you have a spindle depth guide with a freely moving spherical nose it's possible to engrave fixed depth on uneven and curved surfaces.
My move to CNC was driven by the need to engrave fonts, symbols and graphics not available in off the shelf font template sets, I used the pantograph to generate custom templates based on laser printed A4 graphics glued to card and hand cut with reduction to create master templates.
For engraving jobs I'm now using a small CNC mill with a home-brewed speed increaser/engraving spindle/sprung Z-axis slide which allows me to do all the things the IM3 can do plus full 3D engraving paths for sharp corners on deep cut engraved fonts.
If you have any questions feel free to ask,
Regards,
Nick

[CraftyPugs]

I have an IM3, it has a motor and does excellent deep rotary cut/milled engraving, the IM3 is a current model, £450 would be a good price with one font.
I have 4 or 5 Gravograph fonts which amount to more investment than the machine itself.
The IM3 is a 2D pantograph, any cut engraving is fixed depth, using an adjustable nose on the spindle, if you have a spindle depth guide with a freely moving spherical nose it's possible to engrave fixed depth on uneven and curved surfaces.
My move to CNC was driven by the need to engrave fonts, symbols and graphics not available in off the shelf font template sets, I used the pantograph to generate custom templates based on laser printed A4 graphics glued to card and hand cut with reduction to create master templates.
For engraving jobs I'm now using a small CNC mill with a home-brewed speed increaser/engraving spindle/sprung Z-axis slide which allows me to do all the things the IM3 can do plus full 3D engraving paths for sharp corners on deep cut engraved fonts.
If you have any questions feel free to ask,
Regards,
Nick

Hi Nick

I can get the IM3 with Motor, 2 fonts and some blanks for a tad less than the above. I don't know about the depth guide but will ask.

I have seen the machine do scratch engraving on cufflinks, but would like to know the type of items and material for the deep rotary cut/milled engraving.

At the moment, everything is new to me, Metals, plating the machines etc. I assume that the deep engraving cannot be done on Plated metals ?

Which CNC machine do you now have ?

Many thanks for your help - its appreciated.

Cheers
Frank