Engraving Tips n Tricks

Ok, so here’s my attempt to share some tips about one of my favourite things to pass the time with.

Engraving can be a very nice way to put that extra bling into a mod. First of all you need good tools; in my experience it’s always best to go for quality right away because if you don’t, you’ll probably regret it later. I myself use only the original and very classical Dremel. The one I use is the Dremel 400 Digital. Its a very good and powerful tool that should be in every modder’s toolbox. (fig 1.)

Hooked up to this I have the Dremel Flexshaft (fig 2.); the Flexshaft is an absolute must if you want to get high-quality engravings.

So when that’s all done you need some bits for the actual engraving or you won’t get much done. I use two types of bits for my dremel: one type for the acrylic engravings and one set for all the rest. When doing acrylic I use these bits.

These bits are Dremel Engraving Cutters, article numbers 105, 106 and 107 (fig 3.). There are other cutters as well but these three should get the job done. In some cases I also use the diamond bits to do frosted areas. Then we have aluminum or any other kind of metal engraving and for that you need diamond bits.

These are the Dremel diamond-wheel points (article numbers 7134, 7103 and 7105 — fig 4.). These are the only diamond bits I use and they work absolutely great on just about any surface. So now we have the machine and the bits sorted. Let’s move on to the actual design and how to get some nice lines to follow.

Draw your design using either with a pen or the computer. I make most of my own designs in Corel Draw and Photoshop using a Wacom A3 digitizer. But let’s make this easy. You’ve found a great image that you want to engrave. The easiest way to do this is simply to print your design on normal paper and then use carbon paper to trace it onto the case.

I always use the Pelikan plenticopy 200H (fig 5.) You first put this and then your image on top and trace the design with a pen. This gives you very crisp blue lines to follow and it works on all surfaces. One thing to keep in mind when doing engravings on acrylic is that you engrave the inside of the acrylic and this means that you don’t want to forget to mirror the design if it has text in it or youll have a quite nasty surprise on your hands. Here we can see the result of a printed and traced design. (fig 6.)

The actual engraving

For the outlines you can use any size bit but I usually use the 7134, because it gives a very fine and precise line.

Here you can see the design starting to come alive. (fig 7.)

There are a few hints regarding the initial outlines. You need to go slow; don’t rush because then you’ll end up making mistakes. There’s no erase button when that happens. Also don’t ram the bit into the material – the machine is supposed to do the work, not you.

When filling large areas (fig 8.) there are a few things to keep in mind. As before, go slow and use a gentle touch. And try and keep the strokes in one direction because this gives a smoother surface. After some hours and a few cups of coffee (or whatever your drink of choice might be) you should end up with something quite nice. (figs 9 & 10.)

Now there are some cool things you can do when working with acrylic. Try using different textures to achive depth and a bit more fill in your engraving. Here’s an old side panel I did for an acrylic full tower that I made some time in the early days. (fig 11.)

Here I’ve used different types of textures made with the Dremel Engraving cutters. (fig 12.)

Here (fig 13.) you can see that the inner circle has a texture made up of many small dots and the outer is done by just going bezerk with the biggest cutter I could. I also added clear-coat with a small brush to make parts of the engraving transparent.

In fig 14., I’ve used different bits to do thicker and thinner lines with and without clearcoat. This gives a quite nice effect.

And finally (fig 15.) I added some blue and red LEDs to finish it off.

And thats it from me! I hope that this guide can prove itself useful to some of you and that you might get inspired to take up this engraving thing. It truly is a lot of fun and with some patience and the right tools you can get amazing results. I have to say sorry for the poor quality of some of the images but it was a very long time ago that I made these things and my camera back then was utterly useless. But I think that the pictures are decent enough to get the message through. So its over and out from me.

M Persson aka WPA-WOLVERINE

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