The first thing I had to do in order to start my adventure into engraving was to purchase an engraving machine. Of course.
Truth is, I had no interest in engraving. It was my wife who had recently learned that a local library had one and you could use it as much as you wanted, albeit after you watched a ten minute video on how to use it. That fell through when we went to use it and learned it was down for the foreseeable future.
Oh Well.
Then I looked it up online and found one pretty cheap. By cheap, I'm talking sub $130 cheap. Around that price range. From personal experience, I've learned the hard way that it's worth investing into a better product than the one that's the most affordable. I learned that with a 3d printer. It's done everything I've want, just not at the quality I'm happy with, and for just a bit more money, I could have had a much better one, I learned later on. I've no real regrets about this as the experience I've gained was worth it overall.
The cheapest options for an entry level engraver were for 5 watt machines. I opted for a 10 watt. The Crealty Falcon 10w to be exact.
I have mixed feelings about ordering from Chinese companies but my experience so far has been mostly positive. It cost around $350 dollars.
It was a bit frustrating to set up. You have to attach the rubber tracks and then use an Allen wrench to tighten down some nuts to keep them in place. I recently had it to where there was this type of... knocking, as though the rubber teeth were slipping. Turned out I had the speed too fast but I still went in and loosened those nuts, pulled the rubber track tighter, and re-tightened them. Fixed all the issues.
There's a lot of little things to learn and decide on. It's odd. Things you wouldn't think of like mm/m or mm/s.
That's "Millimeters per second" or "Millimeters per minute."
It can become a little confusing watching tutorials where they have different preferences for things like these.
One thing most engravers can all agree on is that the best software to use is
Lightburn.
Lightburn has a 30day free trial. The good news, that I had to dig to find was that it is NOT a subscription service. You buy it once, you own it forever. However, you only get ONE YEAR of updates from day you made the purchase. So I figure it's best to use every day of that free trial and even see if I can extend it by clicking on a button that appears when you launch the software, which says "Extend Trial." You bet your sweet butt I'm finding out what that'll give me. I'm pretty stingy about buying software, as in: I'd like to avoid it if possible. But honestly, I'm looking forward to purchasing it. It's been pretty solid thus far. Certainly worth $30!
Wait, it's $60.
Dang.
