These are a pair of wax stamps for use sealing letters. The tree is my design, and the sun was made for a friend. Both were rough-turned on the lathe, and then finished to length with a 1/4in endmill. The engraving was done using a 1/32in ball engraving mill from lakeshore carbide.
This was my first test of the stamp fixture jig from my last post, and I found that it worked very well on the whole. Total cycle times were under 7 minutes a piece including fixture time and getting the g-code loaded. This should let me iterate the design to get the correct depths and detail levels.
The two stamps, the one on the left was designed by me, and one on the right was designed by my partner, Emma Kerr.
Results:
From a machining standpoint, I felt the parts turned out well. The lines were crisp, and I very much like the swirling pattern I got out of my facing pass. However, the resulting stamp could use some work. In particular, the lines were much too shallow, such that it is very difficult to make out the pattern.
I was intrigued to discover that all of the detail seems to come across (provided you get close enough to see it) with every stamp. This suggests to me that while the stamp needs to be deeper and larger overall, there might be a place for more detailed engraving on future versions.
I should also probably also acknowledge that the letters on both are quite backwards. This was very much not intentional, and a somewhat silly mistake, but I do rather like it. I plan to fix it on the next version and then compare the two.
My ME72 cooling block has nothing to do with this project, but it does make a rather aesthetic backdrop.