magnification

[jldj]

How much magnification is most common when engraving?

 

[Matthew Evans]

.

 

[T.G.III]

Never more than what is necessary to produce the cleanest work according to your skill set.

 

[jldj]

I mostly want to be able to engrave Script.

 

[T.G.III]

That is a long road

If you don't already have them get the DVD's from Sam Alfano, they will help a lot.

Again, concerning magnification, it really doesn't matter what it is you're engraving, what matters is weather you can see what you're engraving, that said to much magnification is actually worse than not enough.

 

[monk]

when doing a job using the scope i frequently change from low to medium or even higher. depends on whether i'm cutting a relatively long line, or sneaking into a tiny corner on a hobo.

 

[Mike576]

To give a more specific answer I use a leica a60. With this scope and a .5 Barlow lens (Which cuts the magnification in half but doubles the working distance) i usually am zoomed in about half way for average cutting. It’s nice to be able to see more of the overall deign while cutting to keep things even. It’s very easy to zoom in too far and way over do an area resulting in an imbalance. There are times for sure I wish I had more zoom though, like when doing tiny inlays. Hope this helps!

 

[Aventuraal]

I use a Zeiss OPMI, which uses a fixed final objective and an interior magnification changer. Given my current setup, those magnifications are: 4,8,12,20 and 32x. Most of the time, I am using the 8 and 12x settings, although for really close work, the 20 and, occasionally, the 32x get called on. The Zeiss system can be configured for a much higher magnification, by changing eyepieces, and eyepiece tubes, but the working distance is set by the final objective, not with a Barlow lens. Using a 200mm final objective (the one I use for most things, but I have others), you get a working distance of about 8 inches with other distances ranging from about 4" to about 36" accordingly. With this system you remain at a fixed working distance, but the field of view (as well as the depth of field) reduces accordingly as you increase the magnification. If you look at photos of Italian engravers doing the bulino style work, they generally seem to use a hand-held Zeiss 10x loupe which has a working distance of about 1 inch (although, I have seen others using a Zeiss 3-6-9 loupe). You can start with a Magnavisor, (I did, and so have a lot of others), with different lens plates, which give different magnifications, but you loose working distance the higher you go, and there is a top end to that system of about 3.5 or 4 x; you can add a separate loupe system to one side of the Magnavisor, and gain another (I think) about 2x on the one side.