Experimenting with the mill

These are some experiments to render some patterns on the mill.

I did a wave pattern on a powder-coated green box and two bare-metal boxes. I also did a pattern similar to the cover of Joy Division’s UnknownPleasures.

The green boxes came out good but the lack of contrast makes the effect rather mild. The mill took about 45 mins to complete the job.

I did the same design on two bare metal enclosures. I think I like this better than the green box. I played with the depth. One box uses a depth of about 0.1mm the other is about 0.3mm. The downside to the deeper engraving was it took several passes at about 45min each.

I managed to offset the design by mistake, twice in a row. Oops. Not sure how I did it twice. I think these usable are as is.

This last box was engraved with a pattern based on the Unknown Pleasures album cover. This is the second version of this idea I’ve done.

The mill works well with a black matte powder coat. The contrast is good, and the matte coating mills very cleanly.

The first picture below shows the latest job, and the other images show the first version.