My engraver is now operational; here are the first reels. This is the same bronze frame design I have made for more than 2 years, but with some porting holes left out to make room for lettering.

This is the culmination of a project that I started in July 2015, when I bought an Acme thread tap so I could make my own anti-backlash leadscrew nuts. Most of my blog posts since last July are on the design and fabrication of the engraver.

Update 22 June 2016: The engraving example here was done with a square end mill of .018 diameter. Being a “standard” length end mill, the cutting length is 3x the diameter, or .054 inch. These are carbide end mills, and are quite brittle. I broke several. So then I switched to “stub” length, or .027 inch cutting length, but these still break. Most recently I have bought T2 style tools from 2L (2Linc.com). I think that this is a much stronger configuration. I bought .015 tip diameter and 45 degree included cone angle, so when I make the groove .005 inch deep, the width at the top of the groove is .019 inch.