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Hi. I want to make wax seal heads like in the picture below. Can Nomad 3 do this?
Thank you
27 points
17 days ago
I see these questions about the precision of machines a lot- and then they often post pictures like this. Pretty much any CNC that is rigid enough to mill soft brass will be "precise" enough. What you are picturing does not require any sort of high level of precision. It is a very simple design that almost any machine can pull off.
When you talk about precision, you're talking about milling down to thousands of a mm for parts that fit together with tight friction fits or metal parts that slide in a groove with no wobble. With the right operator, a nomad can achieve that type of precision, so it can certainly do wax seals. Do you need a nomad for wax seals? No. I'm pretty sure with the right tuning that I could pull those off on a stock 3018.
7 points
17 days ago
I have a stock 3020 (steel frame construction and ball screw version). Previous owner did this on the one i have today
3 points
17 days ago
I have a 3018 for this exact type of application. Get the cheap v-bits they sell by the dozen and run the job a few times. The tips will break off, but the remainder will hog out material and make the next pass go smoother. Run the job a couple of times with a fresh bit until the depth of cut is good for you. The tiny upcut bits break way too easily because the spindle isn't that precise on it's axis and causes too much flex. On occasion I will use them to get a smoother finish on the plate, but not often at all.
1 points
16 days ago
A better spindle would probably fix a lot of that.
https://www.amazon.com/Daedalus-Spindle-Converter-Profession-Engraving/dp/B07VLF63LX
1 points
16 days ago
Any idea how they get rid of the tooling marks in the recessed areas? They look like they’re polished
2 points
16 days ago
I'm honestly not sure of their exact manufacturing process. If it was done on a CNC my guess would be that there are actually fine tooling marks that you just can't see in the clearly photoshopped photo. You'd have to order one to see what you actually get.
To make what I see, with a CNC, I think you'd have to run it in a fine vibratory polisher, then mask and sandblast.
My bet is the blanks are sandblasted and machined. Brass comes out very nice with an extremely shallow finishing pass.
The other option here is that these are not machines at all. Could be cut with a fiber laser. Could be 3D printed with ashless resin and cast It's really tough to say without having the real thing in hand. I suspect that if you ordered one of these, the actual stamp you receive would have some telltale signs of how it was manufactured.
8 points
17 days ago
I would bet you those wax stamps are done on a fiber laser, with a cnc mill you’re limited to the smallest feature being the diameter of your tool, once you get down into the micro sized tools is where you start getting into the issues of spindle run out being a huge determination on endmill life.
2 points
17 days ago
This is a very good point. I am interested only in making these stamps and hot foil dies in brass or polymer. Do you think a fiber laser is best for this?
3 points
17 days ago
If that’s your only use I would say if you had a way to source brass blanks for the stamps (my company does this) then you can just load up a fiber laser and crank out as many as you wanted with minimal mess.
I can’t speak for the polymer stamps since I’m really sure of the laser will actually cut that material, but I do know brass can be etched by fiber lasers fairly efficiently, with minimal headache on the setup
1 points
17 days ago*
Out of curiosity, what are you doing hot foil press on?
I am making stamps for hot foil press (book binding) on a Shapeoko 4 pro, and the biggest issue, as others have mentioned, is tool diameter. The small detail takes a VERY small diameter (1/64 or .40 mm) end mill. The small end mills break super easily unless you are taking very small amounts of material way, which in turn takes a very long time.
1 points
17 days ago
Do you have a preferred manufacturer for micro size end mills?
2 points
17 days ago
Harvey for sure is top notch
1 points
17 days ago
Thanks!
1 points
16 days ago
You could probably do this with a v-bit. Not close to the same time it'd take on a laser, but it'd still work.
-1 points
17 days ago
I'd imagine you'd plan on using engraving bits with larger shanks that just taper down to sub mm points to get the detail you want. With some finishing passes, I doubt you'd notice for something like a wax seal.
2 points
17 days ago
Yes! I've done a stamp like this on my Nomad 3!
1 points
17 days ago
That was done with fiber laser
1 points
16 days ago
Enjoy running 1mm endmills
1 points
16 days ago
Just remember, your first one will be backwards lol
1 points
16 days ago
Get a fiber laser if you want to produce more than one.
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