Vectric Customer

Need info about engraving stainless steel.
What bit to use?
Depth of engrave.
Speeds and feed?
Any other tips.
Thanks
mark-s

Spring loaded diamond drag bit is what I'd use.

Mobius wrote:Spring loaded diamond drag bit is what I'd use.

Agree. I tried to engrave stainless with a flat tip engraving spade bit a couple of times with and without lubricant. Kind of worked but it always looked a bit messy.
The diamond drag bit is much cleaner and faster. However, the lines are extremely fine and e.g. larger text would need something like a pocketing tool path to get a hashed interior.

Here some of my diamond drag experiments on stainless (the golden one is also stainless with some plating):
I used a homemade sping loaded drag bit holder with a 1/4" linear ball bearing (inside the big tube). Held in the non-rotating spindle and works quite well.

It really dpends what you are trying to achieve, a drag bit will mark it but as tailmaker says the lines are very fine, even with more than one pass, you may get better results if you beef the spring up in the holder

Main problems with using a rotating bit are rigidity & spindle speed, Mills are a lot more rigid than routers & have much slower speed spindles which is why people tend to use them for this sort of work