Download A Manual For Machine Engravers

which require the quick laying out of a standard typeface within set margins.
Sometimes the lettering has to be very precisely placed on a panel and you need to
be able to see exactly where it is going. You need to be able to see where the centre
of a word is and be able to locate it accurately above a hole or on a dial.
Most of the graphic packages work on the assumption that the user of the
software is the designer of the end product. Most engravers have to work from the
other direction and need to translate exactly what is on an architect's or
engineer's drawing (or cigarette packet), doing exactly as they are told to within
fine tolerances.
To sum up this warning, if you are looking for an engraving package, as opposed
to a graphics design package, don't accept a demonstration that concentrates on
how easy it is to modify the shape of a letter. Make sure you are convinced you
can lay out six lines of standard Gill Sans or Helvetica or single line block, or any
other common typeface, quickly and easily and that the software brings all the
functions you require together. I suffered a demonstration of an "engraving"
program recently where the operator had to use several programs to achieve a
simple label, dodging between a graphics package and a word processing package
to achieve an acceptable result. A pantograph would have been quicker
Perhaps the best advice is, take a handful of your current jobs to the
demonstration and ask the salesman to show you how he would tackle these.
The same parameters apply when buying the hardware for your CC system as
apply if you were going out to buy a pantograph machine.
I know I have just issued this warning, but it is of paramount importance that the
company that sells the machine to you is able to look after you, this means that
they should always have someone in an office who is qualified to put you right
when you make a wrong move as you will. They should also have the ability to
put right actual faults with the software or the hardware, either by sending out an
engineer or taking in the faulty component and repairing it in their own works.
Pay a visit to their works and see this for yourself, if possible speak to the service
engineer himself. Take a look at their workshop. Remember you may have
bought this machine on the premise that it will do the work of four men, if this is
true and it stops, you have four men idle until it can be repaired.
My preference would be for a machine that operated off any IBM compatible PC
and one which would accept software from other sources than the supplier of the
engraving machine. There is a lot of very exciting software available for the
workshop, ranging from design to accounting. Don't think though that because
you have a PC that will take an accounting package that is a bonus. If you
genuinely need to buy a CC engraver the PC will be taken up all day serving that,
and unless you are going to do the accounts in the evening there is no point.
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