Question on the recess. Do you find much variance from chip to chip in terms of how centred the new recess is? I’m looking at some hot stamps that I want to mill and was curious what sort of variance to expect in terms of what appears to be a ring around the recess.
Hopefully this makes sense. Totally new to milling….
If you are talking about “centered-ness” or even apparent centered-ness in respect to paulsons process (not all of thier chips are perfectly centered to begin with)
There is some variance, 1mm or so, give or take, and it sometimes it is noticeable, (where the milled recess doesn’t look dead center in Paulsons inner ring).
Important thing, set-up, have at least a shuffle stack of similar size/wear chips to test on… you are going to go through a few chips making micro adjustments. And then later, on top of that, probably a couple spares incase something happens or a few are less than perfect.
If perfection is your goal, there’s a lot of variables to this process, and this slight variance in my experience is due first ro the chip mounting apparatus, then to finger pressure on the chip when milling and next would be clay dust pile-up in the milling apparatus.
When I want things perfect or when I feel like the press is veering out of alignment, I turn the press off and bring the bit down to the chip stationary, are the blades centered on the chip? Rotate 90 degrees… centered? 90 degrees … centered? …90 centered? Adjust as needed and get back to work.
You can definitely be a lot more careful than I was in this video and get a slightly better result… but I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter all that much at the end of the day.
Depending on the labels, they themselves can also be cut a tad off-centered and I’ve used that at times to offset any misalignment in the milling. A slightly off centered chip recess and a slightly off centered sticker label, that actually can make a dead center label. (Shy side label to proud side recess and vice versa)
There is a diffeeent process for milling that can net more perfect recesses… router-table method.
@allforcharity has some experience. Much louder and dustier I think, but once set proper would remove most of the variance experienced with the drill press method.
The pictures l put up are pretty representative of the “quick” work I was doing, (a couple are pretty off center) I could totally dial it in if I wanted to spend double the time 1hr per rack as opposed to the 1/2 hour per rack I had been doing for this batch, plus, with all these chips, I had tons of extra spares, so could totally afford to toss a couple of the worst.
@Josh Kifer is a pro, I would be curious what his take is on it…
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