CNC milling instead of brass etching.

Depends upon the brass thickness and the ability to hold it down firmly.

A high speed small diameter cutter to emulate the slot produced by etching would be required and probably not readily available on home cnc kit.

I have made some small parts on my cnc XO with 0.032" cutters but the speed range of 2000 rpm means only very light cuts can be made so it takes a long time. I have not tried anything as thin as the brass sheet that you are probably using though.

Alan

I have a few people using the MicroMill for brass sheet. Fit an MDF panel and hold the brass down with double sided tape works well. May need to 'surface' the MDF if you are going to use a V cutter to partially machine for folding, as the small variations give a modulation to any groove, but if it's for folding rather than just detail it's not so critical. What helps is the high speed Kress spindle rather than the standard slower speed Taig ER16 with motor. Cutting through into the tape layer for profiling is fine.

I need to pursued a few people to post some of the results ;) I've seen some nice models in progress to date.

Wouldn't this requre very high precision to achieve controlled depth of cut?

X,Y are OK, but 'z' Sounds tricky.

BugBear