RollerStamper

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This is the roller stamper that I have been trying to get around to for years now and finaly got the first test pieces rolled out. I need to add a set of gears to synch them together but even without it seems to work fine. The roller needs a bit of touch up to remove some areas that still stick up too much and cause scratches but for the most part it looks like I will be able to hook it up to a gear motor and crank out the metal cards about 3 every second.

Step one is turning the basic roller shape with the shaft all from one piece of mild steel rod.

Next I use a dremel tool mounted in my homemade quick change tool post mount with multi axis adjustments to mill away all of the areas that are not text. I used a pencile to sketch out the letters in reverse and with a wrench for a lever on the chuck for the z axis control I hand milled the text for the three cards I'm printing in this group. With a diameter of 1.5 inches the roller provides about 4 and a half inches of what ever I want, 3 small biz cards, 2 large, or 1 of my fashionable metal cuffs or wrist bands with printed pattern.

Designing it all in TurboCad made it easier to check to see all the parts match up and when it comes to making the actual pieces printing out the working drawings is a huge help.

And here is the raw product, after being cut into individual segments they get tossed in the corse tumbler for about 3 hours followed by 3 more hours of fine finish for a nice smooth surface and no sharp edges.

And here is how it looks stamping in polycaronate. I had to frost it a bit with sandpaper to get it to show up and the ones I ran thru the tumbler got completely ground away. If I can find a way to frost the strips first it may work better.

To make it easier I added a large gear motor to drive it. The high torque needed to drive it made it nessasary to use a shaft keyway and cutting the slot can be done in several different ways. First I started the slot with a homemade slot cutter called a broche.

Since this was a long slot I did some ruff cutting with a hacksaw with 4 blades clamped together to make the full 5/32" wide cut.

And here is the full machine as it stands now.

I need to add a small table guide to keep the metal strips running straight through the center and if I get a bunch of biz for it I may add an auto feed device that will feed the strips in like a printer does paper.

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