Ok I might be nuts… but my wife got some stainless dog tags and I was wondering if I can engrave them. I found a doc on the internet where someone used 2.5 mm/s and four 0.1mm passes to do it with a ball nose endmill by applying some lubricant by hand.
Anyone try something like this?
Haven’t tried it but your numbers don’t seem too aggressive to not want to give it a try. I don’t know what the best lubricant for SS would be though, my experience with SS is pretty much limited to refacing valves and threading tube for crank trigger housings.
Don’t know if you’ve tried the engraving yet, but I’d try a diamond drag engraver like this one from Lakeshore Carbide. It’s spendy for sure, especially if this is gonna be a one off, but if you plan on doing regular engraving it might be a good investment. I don’t have one personally yet, but I’ve seen some pretty amazing results with these, and it’ll engrave everything up to and including glass, so stainless should be a piece of cake.