In this post, I will walk you through how to get a beautifully engraved Bride and Groom Silhouette like the one above. These instructions will work for any other design you may want to engrave in metal as well, all you need is an image in either PNG, JPG, GIF, or BMP.
Materials you will need are:
The Zoom Precision Brother ScanNCut Engraving Tool (can be purchased here)
Metal Engraving Sheets (can be purchased here; I used the red on this, but also tried gold which looked amazing as well)
Any type of tape
Your normal Brother ScanNCut mat.
Follow these steps to get a perfect engraving.
SOFTWARE/CREATING THE IMAGE
1. Open CanvasWorks (I use the downloaded version, although CanvasWorks online works as well, graphics may look a little different than shown here but the principles are the same).
2. Click the "Trace" button found in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Find your image and select it (remember it needs to be a PNG, JPG, GIF, or BMP)
3. Once you've selected your image, the dialogue box below will appear. Be sure to:
a. Unclick the "Paste the image on the Drawing Area" box
b. Select "Trace Areas by Color" under "Tracing Options"
c. Click "OK". (Numbers of Colors don't matter when it is black and white. When it is multicolored play with it to trace the lines you want).
4. Your image should look like this now! Select all of your design by clicking and dragging a box over it. Then, once its all selected, resize the design to fit your metal sheet size. The metal sheet we're using is 5"x7" so we will adjust it to be that size.
5. This is the important part! While all of your design is still highlighted, select "Draw" and choose a "Fill Color" in the upper right-hand corner. Color doesn't matter, just fill it. Everywhere there is color, it will engrave so click on and hit delete on your keyboard for every piece you don't want engraved. We removed the fill on the inside of the heart so you could see the bride and groom.
6. Once this is done, click "File"->"Export to FCM" and save the FCM file somewhere you can find it. Transfer the file from your computer to the machine however you have it set up to do that.
ENGRAVING TOOL / MACHINE SETTINGS
Now that we have an image transferred to our machine. We can tape our metal sheet to our mat. I always put mine 1" below and 1" to the right just to keep away from the edges. Be sure to tape the sheet to the mat firmly so it does not move around while engraving.
2. On your machine, make sure your design is placed within the area that you want it. Also make sure it is filled with color (if it isn't, you may have skipped a step and used "Cut" lines instead of "Draw".) Click "OK" on the screen, then click the tools icon on the next screen. This will bring you to your fill settings, you can play with these, the only recommendation I will make is to keep
Draw Speed: 2
Draw Pressure: 9
The rest of the settings you can play with to get different fill patterns. We will be using the setting below.
3. Place the "regular" tip (see photo below) in the Zoom Precision Engraving Tool, then place the tool in the machine, locking down the arm behind it.
4. Hit "Draw" then the "Start" Button and Wala! just sit and wait for your design to be engraved! Based on the size of your design I've had them take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours!
***** if you want a deeper etch DO NOT REMOVE THE MAT FROM THE MACHINE ONCE IT HAS FINISHED DRAWING! Simply hit "OK" on the finished drawing page, then hit "Draw" and "Start" again. As long as you haven't removed your mat from the machine it will engrave again in exactly the same spot making a deeper engraving. This can be repeated
5. When the drawing has finished, carefully dust off the metal shavings into the garbage and brush off the sheet.
These instructions will allow you to engrave any design into metal to last the test of time. We want to see your creations, please send us photos and any details you have found useful through our website at www.zoomprecision.com. We will send you a file full of some of our cutest designs in return.
Happy Crafting!