My first project: coins from fifth edition D&D source material :)
Pics in order:
- Glamour shot :P
- Copper (heads)
- Copper (tails)
- Silver (heads)
- Silver (tails)
- Gold (heads)
- Gold (tails)
I cut and engraved these in bass plywood with the XTool S1 40W. I used 30% power at 200mm/s for engraving, and 70% power at 12mm/s for cutting. I'm new to the hobby, so I didn't have a good plan for lining up the obverse faces; in the end, I engraved and cut the tails of each coin, then flipped them in the machine and very carefully set up a polygonal processing area based on the various points of each coin. This worked, but was a hassle.
If I make these en masse for my D&D campaign sessions in the future, I plan to poke a couple holes in the plywood first, to use as reference points in marking the processing area. Then, I'll engrave one face of a bunch of coins in that area, flip the stock, set the area by the reference holes, and engrave the obverse face of those coins and cut them out.
I'm really pleased with the S1's performance, especially the detail it can achieve. The whole project took about an hour from start to finish. I might make a bunch of these as they are now, or perhaps use a more powerful engraving setting to make a deeper impression, then coat each coin in copper, aluminium, or gold foil, for the metallic effect.
Credits:
I used the above images with XTool Creative Space's built-in trace and subtract functions, alongside various shapes that came with the software, to build the engraved compound vectors.
^(Yes, I know the ouroboros is facing the wrong way and ought to have wings. I'll fix it in later designs >.<)