Have an order for 100 shot glasses. The rotary I’ve been using for all my glassware to date is ‘too big’ for the tiny little glasses. Typical heavy bottom shot glasses. Nothing fancy.
It’ll engrave well when it wants to, but about every 3rd of 4th one, it’ll skip a ‘turn’. Not a real skip, but just not turn enough and compress the image a bit side to side. I’ve got 4 cases, and really don’t want to waste 40 glasses hoping they’ll work out before I need to buy another case.
I’m using a very heavily modified Vevor version…well…lets just say it’s been modified to handle a lot bigger and longer than what it came out of the box as. Washing them in alcohol prior to engraving helps a bit, and I’ll probably replace the o-rings again with much larger red/orange nitril ones. However, a dedicated shot glass rotary isn’t out of the question based on the inquiries I’m getting.
So, more or less, the best shot glass capable rotary under, say, $200 that will fit the omtech 4 pin. Anyone?
Thanks in advance.
Personally, I prefer a chuck-style rotary to a roller-style rotary.
For glasses, I use rubber bands on the jaws for internal grabs and on the item for external grabs (to give it friction and cushion). For bottles, I’ll chuck a cork in the jaws. For either, in order to stabilize the free end and hold the item to the jaws, I make custom-sized coaster-like cups that I use with the tailstock:
(They’re just a disc with a small hole, a ring to make a rim, and some thin self-stick EVA foam for cushion.)
If the diameter of the item is small and the engraving location on it could have me crashing the nozzle into the chuck (pens, for example), I swap in a lens tube I configured for longer throw. It’s set up a with a 4" lens in the “wrong” end of a tube to put the focal point 56mm from the end of the nozzle. Gives me plenty of throw to clear the rotary hardware, and the extended depth of focus is convenient for curved glasses.
For truncated-cone shapes, I can elevate one end of the rotary to make the engrave closer to horizontal, within the usable depth of focus. (I also replaced the rails with the longest ones I can fit in my machine, which makes wine bottle engraving easy as… pi.)
Those days where someone else was thinking, and I forgot how…LOL, that was today. Thank you for that!
I’ve got a chuck. It’s wired for the machine already, but I’d moved it to my metals only Gravograph IS700 (had half a dozen rifle barrels that needed engraved) and promptly forgot about it.
I’ll move it to the machine, make an intermediate plate as a ‘cup holder’ with the foam like you said…and I’ll probably be done engraving those in a weekend. LOL…some days the brain just checks out.
Again, thank you!
Both types have advantages/disadvantages - you just pick the one that works best for you and/or application. I have both and have used them both with either the co2 or fiber.
Probably use the chuck the most - as what I’ve been doing is mostly smaller stuff that works well with a chuck type rotary.
That’s one of the neat things about these types of lens tubes, they are pretty versatile.
I figure the depth of focus (dof) to be almost 11mm with the 4" lens.
I switch around a lot, so I keep forgetting what lens/nozzle gap I need, so I started engraving my tubes with the data on the fiber…
Tubes are cheap, the cost is really shipping
