Richard of Slate Signs and Designs saw a TrueMotion powered ICAM machine cutting out engineering parts and thought if this machine can cut hard materials and engrave, can it possibly stone? The answer from TrueMotion was, there is no reason why not, however the company had no experiance of machining natural stone only a synthetic stone.

AMS with its history of helping customers utilise TrueMotion technology to overcome production and prototyping problems offered time on a machine for Richard to experiment. With several machines available one was quickly modified and a test undertaken.

Richard wanted to cut and engrave soft materials like marble but also deep engrave and process granite, a substance noted for its hardness and durability. The choice of machine size was easy, the machine had to be able to work a 1200mm wide slab by 900mm high. A 400 size machine would be ideal(work bed 1250x 1250mm), but it would need to carry a high thrust machine head with a low rotation speed. The traverse rate would need to be much slower than an auto-router. The increased thrust and the reduced traverse rate could easily be achieved by increasing the drive gear reduction ratios. Using an engineering head in place of a router set would provide the lower cutter rotation rate required but a pressure loaded sole plate similar to that of an auto-router would have to feature. Vacuum and mist coolant services would also need to be available.

It was not long before a machine was fitted out ready for a test run, the first job was loaded and the tool rotation and traverse rates were set. Within a few minutes of starting an exploratory task was completed, although the cut and finish were reasonable it was clear that the cutting bit was not right and some other adjustments would need to be made. Richard was well pleased with this first attempt but he knew that a dedicated stone cutting head would need to be developed to ensure the stone could be machined and worked to the highest standards.

Seeing the potential, Richard had a stone processing head manufactured, this would need to be able to machine different types of stones as well as the versatility to do overhead or terrain following engraving. TrueMotion engineers helped Richard develop the stone processing head and this innovative device has now been fitted to several machines.

TrueMotion ICAM technology is ideal for working stone as images, sketches and even photographs can be selected and replicated digitaly on to slate with simple drag and drop moves.

Virtually any text you have on your computer (or you import) can be engraved, that means Chinese characters, Arabic text and even old runic text!

TrueMotion "Draw Go" technology is easy to use, once you have designed what you want, you can compose (move text and drawings into different positions with the mouse) and finaly the drawing can be streched or morphed to fit the size of the stone!