Manual Engraver:

A manual engraver lets you lay out the letters you want to engrave in a tray.  The letters are made up of grooves in brass.  A manual engraver uses a probe that runs through this groove.  Attached, through a series of lever arms, is a diamond tip that repeats anything the probe does on the surface of what you’re engraving.

The process requires you to manually set the pressure that the diamond tip exerts on your engraving surface.  That means you need to keep steady pressure to get a good consistent result.  One trap is that if you aren’t careful the probe can jump out of the groove resulting in the diamond tip also going where it wasn’t intended.  Time for a re-do.

The nice thing about a manual engraver is that you do have control over the engrave process, each and every letter, and you can easily apply added pressure if needed or reduce it if not needed.  This can offer more control than some computerised engravers.  The trade-off for this is that you are relatively restricted in terms of font faces and the additional flourishes (such as logos or clip-art graphics).

In the short time  I’ve been involved in the trophy and engraving industry I’ve learned that this engrave has heaps of potential capabilities that I just haven’t explored.  For me, this is because the computerised engravers usually fill my needs for more complex engraving.

I have found that the biggest limitation on a manual engraver is the inability to automate and scale.  Each engrave is a manual process where you need to be actively using the engraver.  Changing an engraving plate is a process that requires some thought and attention to ensure that the next engrave will be in the right position.  Changing the test you’re engraving means changing the layout of your letters – something that can be a lengthy process for a larger engraving job.

Ultimately, it was these sorts of factors that encouraged us to very quickly enter the world of computerised engraving.  In the next article in this series I’ll look at computerised rotary engravers.

Share/Save

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.

Share/Save