It looks like watches that are worth engraving are protected by the manufacturer’s dealer network, just like firearms. I understand why, it’s just painful when you are on the outside looking in. Make friends with your local gunsmiths and jewelers.
I’d like to try engraving a men’s wristwatch case and bracelet band. For you guys that do this professionally do you use a jeweler/watchmaker to disassemble and reassemble the crystal and inner workings or are you set up to do it yourself. It seems like that’s a rabbit hole that could swallow...
Allen, I believe that may be it. They don’t give you any instructions on how to set the vertical axes of the head (front-to-back, side-to-side). I played with the front-to-back adjustment (what a machinist would call “nod” on a milling machine) and that has helped. When I originally set it up I...
No, I’ve been using it for several months now. It’s just that the problem is making it difficult to do some straight lines on a border I’m doing right now.
The field of view through the scope is a circle. If I lay a graver flat on the work going left to right centered in that circle I should be looking straight down on the graver. That way I’m looking straight down on the cut as I make it. With my setup in order to look straight down on the graver...
I have a Leica A60 on a flex arm. My complaint is that when my graver is in the center of the field of view I am not looking directly down on it. In order to view the graver straight down I have to move it down into the bottom 1/4 of the field of view. This makes it uncomfortable since I’m...
The guys at Adobe need to talk with the guys at Autodesk. Autocad is really good at trimming and closing paths. It stinks at freehand drawing but has some good tools for handling vectors.
The best I’ve come up with is to make the object a compound path. That closes it up but the fill still doesn’t act right. Probably not worth the effort just to try and get a better idea of positive/negative balance.
It won’t be long before the jewelry industry is all digital with ”lost resin” casting instead of lost wax. The key part (and the hard part for us of a certain age) is learning how to create an object digitally. 3D modeling just hurts my brain.
Most of the info on Adobe Illustrator is centered around illustration, not line art like used in our work. For you pros out there that use Illustrator a lot I have a question. I want a background fill where there are no scrolls or leaves, just like the real thing. It’s easy if you make the...
If you can draw it in Fusion 360 you can print darn near anything. I want to try one of those resin printers that print with uv cure resin rather than plastic filament. The detail you can get is amazing.
Thanks John. That’s a cool way to help get the divots out and get everything as even as possible. Jeez, who would have thunk background was so complicated?
Thanks Andrew. Now that I’m not digging up the background by having the handpiece set too high I can see a nice pattern of dots. I’ll have to try punching the background to even it out before stippling. That sounds better than trying to grind away the divots. As I get better with the little...
Figured it out. I had my handpiece set way too high. I turned it down and I’m getting a nice pattern now. The bottom isn’t perfect with a divot here and there but they don’t telegraph through to the top.