Nate still needs a logo or something.
 
That dragon is pimpin.  What type of bits so you use?

thanks!  I finished a black Acetal-copolymer top.  Pics to come soon.

I was thinking you would need something spring loaded to accommodate imperfectly flat surfaces.  I can only get around 3K rpm, but the end mill can remove copious amounts of material.
 
I was thinking if I "engrave/mill" I can sandblast the top, then sand it down so the logo will stick out as a soft matte finish against a shiny brushed finish. 

a raised logo would take forreeevvveerr!  removing all the material thats not in that dragon?  wow, i would be curious to see how many tens of thousands of lines of code that would be.  it was over 3K for just the classy logo! 
 
Edit:  thats a job for CAM software, and Tool changing capabilities. 

That would also how I would do it.  Not with a face mill, but with a 1/2" end mill running with overlap.  I already have a jig which gets the part right back into the same spot every time, and the screws are countersunk, so facing 0.01" won't be a problem.  It could EAT through material at that depth with the quickness.  practically at G00 speeds.

at least 30 ipm I think are my rapids, and I have that bell curve to about the middle of the chart as far as speed goes.  I really am not in any rush for the rapid commands.

When it comes to lighting, I think nothing has better sex appeal then Plexi.  If LED's are embedded into the plexi and it lights the edges up, nothing compares to it.
 
Anyhow, as promised, pics of the acetal co-polymer:

Its not polished at ALL, this is just how it looks after a rough cut.  It looks like marble when its all polished and clear coated.  It really is a thing of beauty. 

Everything has to fit in a 1/2" thickness.  It sounds interesting, but it would take quite a bit of coding.
 
Speaking of coding, the O-ring for the V-reg block is done:

If your not in any rush, it would take a while to build another machine.

interesting ideasI can code anything, only making 2 reliefs fit together and look perfect will be a challenge. at least from that low res jpeg. do me a favour and see if you can find a higher res version of that dragon. If not I can clean it up a bit by hand.
 
I did a search for other images and tbh, that one is the nicest for our application that I was able to find.
things that make a jpg good for extracting vectors:
greyscale
high contrast
well defined lines
high resolution
etc.
 
obviously the best form of graphic for a cnc guy to work with is one that uses vectors. but that is rare to find unless someone has made the logo/graphic for you.
 
I will post some pics tonight of my engraving head. It sits on the W access on my 7x14 router table next to the Z spindle. the spring loading of the engraving bits is crucial when I do engraving on bigger sheets of material, because the material hieght can vary a lot. (.005+-) and that can make the diference of a muddy looking engraving and a clean sharp one when dealing with very detailed vectors. It is also used to set a down pressure which causes a defined line when set properly. think deep scratches as opposed to actual milling.
 
now when I use an endmill to engrave on the spindle its a whole diferent process, similar to how nate does it, but my spindle is 24k rpm and 15 hp I have rapid of 500ipm and run most of my work in wood and plastics at 50-200ipm. I can slow everything way down but it wont spin at less than 1000 rpm so I cant do any threading on it. also it is no mill, it just doesnt have the beef behind it like a traditional mill does even though I can do a lot of the same type of work. I also have no liquid cooling avalable with this setup. I do use forced air to cool the bit but liquid would not be a good idea with this kind of table.
 
I also have a 150w laser on a 4.2'x24' table for cutting and engraving and I have 1/2 of a bridgeport nee mill sitting in the corner waiting for us to find the time to retrofit with a new controller. certain materials just dont play nice with the laser, I havnt tryed copper yet but I might try a sample to see what that looks like.
 
 

Nice to hear you are Progressing nate!
I had a thought, yes i know dangerous and my head may over heat ;P However I'll list it here anyways. hehehe, I will be the first to admit I have basically zero knowledge of how the machines you 2 are using to do the engraving and creation of custom pieces. So having admited that please go easy on me if this is just completely idiotic or so far off how its done to be laughable.
Would just Inverting the programing for the engraving of the dragon work to make your mill do a raised image of the dragon? Basically tell the machine to cut everywhere BUT where the lines are for the image, And changing the depth to dig to in the engraving to a depth to dig the rest out?
I do find what you are doing quite interesting and wouldn't mind some day perhaps building my own. So my question is me trying to understand the way the coding works in addition to seeing if i can even some day get to the point where I may be able to do what you are doing for me.

some pics of my setup:

so on the right you can see the engraving head and on the left the spindle.
 
it is all controlled via the touchscreen.
 
so to answer your question Forgotten: with a small detailed engraving like the dragon, to mill everything except the lines for the dragon is not feasable, but what can be done is mill everything except a sortof profile of the surrounding object and then engrave the fine lines on the raised surface. think of a rased outside shape of .01 or so then the fine lines 'scratched' in at a depth and width of .005".  so what i'm trying to say is, that when a line that is .005 thick is .01 or less away from another .005 line it is very hard on this sort of equipment to mill out the .005 between the lines to actually cause it to look raised. now if the lines ar .0625(1/16") thick with at least .0625 space between them , it would be much easier to mill between the lines to remove everything except the line. ... does that make sense?
 
now the other consideration is machine time. guys like me who use our machines to make a living, try to get a certain amount an hour that the machine is running. (sucks a lot of energy, bit wear, shop overhead, etc.)  just engraving without milling around the surrounding area takes a lot less time than milling out the entire piece except for the logo. so machine time does play a large role in how a job is designed. as far as labor goes, usually on a long job, we can walk away from it and come back to it once it is finished, so we dont have to actually be in front of it the whole time.
 
so if you look at the pictures above you will see a job that I am milling for a customer. it is 1.75" think birch. the curved side is milled down .01" per pass. put into perspective, it takes 30 min for one of those to be shaped. and that is 5k lines of code because it is not a true arc.
 
hope this helps you get an idea how it works.

if nate likes it, can you pm me the original file? so i can code it for him? a vector file such as from AI or coreldraw or something is obviously much better for me than a jpg. but high res jpg will work if you did it in paint or some other bmp.
 
looks cool

dont bother sending the file to me then:) Nate send me what you had in mind if you want.

for the logo how about a fancy version of this:
 
"Doo It The NateMan Way!"
 
use an "O" in the inlet and the "A" as the outlet?