Can Easel do engraving in alloy

Hi
Has anyone used Easel and X-Carve to engrave into alloy? I’m wanting to do stuff similar to the image below and am thinking about using Easel and the X-Carve.

I am guessing you mean an alloy of steel? Many of us have used it to carve everything from Aluminum to Granite. Steel milling has been done and a V bit should mill into alloy steel also as I have seen it done on knife blades. An upgraded spindle will be needed though for long term metal working. Also something along the lines of Fusion360 and or Aspire 4 or V Carve would be needed for the CAD/CAM side of things. A number of us do this sort of thing so feel free to hit us up with any questions you might have.

A lot of the type of detail you are showing in the pic is often done with acid etching.

As Travel says this can be done but not with a stock machine and I highly dought that Easel is up to the job.

I’ve been trying to use Mach3 but it’s impossible to use. I have all my designs on a Mac so that’s why I want to use Easel. Is the software out there that will work on a Mac that’s easy to use that can engrave?

Assuming a flat material surface then more than possible from Easel on a stock machine but it is a slow process depending on the alloy. But I’ve done it and it worked just fine as a one off. If you were doing it every day I’d want a much more powerful spindle, coolant handling and better software though.

But agree with William here, acid etch would be better and would give better results for things like chain rings. But there are options there, like using spray paint for etch resist, then using a laser diode to remove the resist before acid etching and removing pain’t afterwards with petrol or acetone. I’m getting good results doing this in copper using my stock X-Carve, a laser diode, and Chillipepr (as Easel isn’t set up for lasers). I do all this from a Mac. Other benefit is that it will handle small changes in surface height. More over here: Paint/Resist laser ablation

Cheers

Ian

It seems very difficult. And it needs gretat alloy steel. I think 4340 alloy steel is a good choice for it.