I engraved a bunch of Swiss Army Knives for our scout troop over the weekend. First step was to make a jig out of layered cardboard, to both hold the knife steady and bring the snapmarks icons up to approximately the right level. I had to remove the crumb tray and the air assist was jostling it, so I added a couple wrenches to stabilize the setup. After that, I just used the regular proofgrade acrylic engrave settings and some masking. The engrave came out great!
This was my first time using snapmarks, and I was surprised at how variable the image was after each time I used it. Even though the jig was right under the camera and in basically the same place, it seemed like the image-to-cut offset was noticeably different every time. If I had been placing the engraves manually like I normally do, I definitely would have messed up some of the knives. The snapmarks alignment worked really well, however. It was nice not having to zoom in and obsess about pixels.
The other surprising thing was how long it took the snapmarks alignment to process. I didn’t factor that into my time estimate for engraving each one. If I had to do it again I would make the jig hold multiple knives to reduce the waiting time.
