Mar 18 2009
Wonderful World of Engraving
We purchased the trophy and engraving business from it’s previous owners about three years ago. Included in that purchase was the engraver they were using – an old-ish Gravograph IM3 manual pantograph engraver. Even today, this engraver still gets some use from time to time for particular jobs. On the whole, though, the fact that it is a completely manual engraving process means that it isn’t particularly time efficient for anything other than fairly small engraving jobs. It’s also a bit limited for the choice of font faces available.
The research we did before buying the business told us that we really needed to move forward and look at a computer-controlled engraver. First shock was that this stuff doesn’t come cheap. Some of it is stunningly expensive – albeit wonderfully capable.
In the end, we decided that a Roland EGX-20 would suit both our budget and our immediate requirements. Even now, three years later, this engraver is still serving us well. As a step up from the Gravograph we suddenly had the ability to engrave graphics/images as well as no longer being limited to just a couple of font faces.
Even so, we increasingly found that it failed to offer some capabilities that we were increasingly finding ourselves being asked to provide. For example, engraving items made of stainless steel or brass.
The price seems to fluctuate around a bit but, checking tonight, isn’t all that much cheaper than when we bought ours. That’s kind of nice in a way – something that probably hasn’t depreciated all that much over three years.
This year, we decided it was time to purchase a new engraver. The main criteria for our new purchase being that it needed to be something that was an upgrade in capabilities from the EGX-20. Back to the research drawing board…
As much as we’d have liked getting a laser engraver, the $20k price tag was more than we could justify.
Ultimately, we went back to Roland. The EGX-350 offered increased capabilities without breaking the bank. On paper (well, pdf and web, anyway) it looked good with features that would be of benefit. Placed our order, and waited for it to arrive. When it did the first impression was the shear size of the box. This is a big engraver! Was it worth it? We’ve now had the engraver for about three months and I love it! I plan to write more about the engraver and engraving in general later but suffice to say that we’re having fun exploring new capabilities.
