Tonight I will oblige you at least in part. I have the design ready to go specifically for this purpose. I was going to try acetyl for the first time. I don’t think I have a 1/2", but I’ll check when I get home. I do have a 1/2" corian, and it does pretty good for stamping leather, but I don’t have a 12 ton press. I do have a Cider press that does a wicked job though! I might have someone who has the press though. He has made saddles before and wants to show me the shop but insists that I wait until he cleans it up.
I’ll see how the acetyl behave for the engraving itself though.
Thank you! This is an experiment that I’m eager to see … and you’re always very generous with your time when it comes to requests like these. It’s much appreciated.
I never thought about Corian… I bet that would hold up as well as acetyl. I’m interested in how a 3D engrave would come out. Am I thinking right that the gradients would be reversed as it’s a stamp then?
Edit: Acetal… Delrin is the name brand given to it by DuPont.
If you haven’t found this topic, it’s all about my tests of Corian. Here is one of the posts that has both positive and negative engraves.
Doing the Delrin right now. I have some I got from Inventables. 1/4" pretty expensive as things go, about $27 for a 12x12 1/4 inch Black acetal. I did some small engraves to check it out and then tried cutting. One pass 100% power and 7 inches per minute. It cut through about .125" or halfway. Not sure how deep you need the relief. I’ll measure when I pull it out and post the pics.
Initial engraving tests had about .5 mm with 100% 335 speed and 340. More to come.
O crud. Forgot the last crucial step before making a stamp, reversing the design. Arg!!! Well now I definitely have to make a reverse engrave to be able to do a paper emboss from underneath.
Interesting the surface of the engrave. This is at 640 lpi . 100% power. Full speed. Deserves some more precise testing and someone who knows how to design a stamp. Oh well.
Pretty precise on the letters that I can see. I’ll cut it out and put it in the cider press on some thin leather and some thick leather and see what happens. I know folks make leather stamps with them. Just need to figure out the settings.
By the way: not a 3D engrave. No greyscale. @takitus is your guy there. I’ve just done a few gradients that worked ok on wood. Will think about this some more and see what I can do.
Fantastic! Thanks for taking time to do this. A tip on stamping the leather: moisten it first with a spray bottle or sponge. The leather will darken with the water so let it come back to natural color. That’s how you know it’s a good time for stamping or tooling.
Not as pungent as rubber but a smell that could be unpleasant . I was really vaporizing a lot. My room is closed in and I noticed it. Need to double check all the seals on the vent hose and also turn the ceiling fan on.
Thanks for posting your results, this makes me SO happy to see!
I was unable to test any of the Delrin scrap I have for making printing plates, but your images give me hope!
The key will be getting the letter outlines as smooth as possible, it looks like there are still some jagged edges when engraving at 640 lpi. I wonder if a vector pass around the letters and logo would clean that up…
I know this well!
A customer for custom leather furniture wanted his brand on a panel of the sofa. I hacked it out of 1/2" square steel bar and ground it nice and flat. Perfect - until I heated it and hit a piece of scrap. Backwards!
Just had to flip it over. Remember to mirror kids!
I pulled that one too. Had a customer who wanted a logo burned into leather journals. Made it, then realized. Took longer to take it all the way out then if I’d remade the whole thing.
I know this well!