CNC Laser Engraving & Cutting Custom Leather Patches
Custom leather patches are easy to do and completely customizable and repeatable thanks to our Austrian CNC laser, let’s take a look at the same engraving across various grades of leather on CNCROi.com!
Before we begin, this showcases how we can just as easily make custom business cards out of leather as we can out of stainless steel, acrylic, paper or any other material known or unknown to man. Now, onto the leather!
Before the laser engraving and cutting of these custom leather patches can begin, I wanted to take a photo of the leather without any work done on these scraps first. We do a lot of leather work and designers always ask us what the leather was like BEFORE so here you go.
As for clarity of the engraving, it’s the same across the board, some shades of leather just provide more contrast but the engraving and cutting is of the same quality and depth regardless.
The advantage of darker leathers for custom leather patches is that no cleaning is required, you don’t see the smoke that settles on the surface while the lighter color, as you’ll see, needs to be cleaned-up after CNC laser production.
All four of these leathers are from cows, but the same results are achieved regardless of the source animal, at the end of the day, skin is skin and it all smells like burned-up dead ants. This smell does go away though after cleaning, so it’s by no means permanent.
The massive advantage to laser engraving and cutting custom leather patches is that the engraving has some depth to it, unlike UV or screen printing or even stenciling. These results are completely permanent and nothing is added (only removed) from the leather’s surface.
Does the contrast provided by our Austrian industrial wide-format laser fade over time? Here’s my wallet I did well over a year and a half ago and a brief case, (click links to see how they were made) it looks the same now as it did when it was made!
And the picture of both RIGHT NOW in the shop. These have NOT been sealed or taken all that well care of, they’ve been rubbed, had stuff put on them from lumber through heavy objects, in the rain, snow… and they still look like I did them just yesterday!
As you can see, it’s both leather engravings are a bit more worn but overall, still sharp! Back onto the laser engraving and cutting of these custom leather patches!
This time around, I decided to showcase the same design across four different grades of leather so you can more clearly see the differences between them and make your own judgement as to which is best for your application.
This is my no means an exhaustive test as there are dyed leathers of all colors that also provide different results but overall, you ALWAYS want to use genuine natural leather, the synthetic leather just bubbles and melts under high heat of the laser.
The laser engraving process is precise on these custom leather patches, we are within 5 nanometers of where the software tells the hardware to be, that’s why even incredibly fine lines and details are clearly visible and the same across all four leather samples.
The smoke damage you see again, easily comes off, I just wanted to showcase the results that are achieved fresh out of the machine. These custom leather patches are business card sized by the way, I hope that gives you an idea of scale.
The depth can be controlled by our CNC laser, so if you want these custom leather patches to have deeper engraving or just a light one, it’s no problem. You see both in the above picture.
Now, onto making a custom leather patch using black leather! The process is the exact same as the lighter ones, with the advantage of the smoke that settles on the surface being invisible due to the dark color of the underlying leather.
The power and speed settings are the same across the board, the differences you see in the results are strictly related to material density, the denser it is, the less deep we get through the leather. Being a natural product, there is some natural variation in skin density.
Regardless, the results look spectacular! Imagine going to a networking event and giving these out! People will be blown away by the clarity and depth on this natural leather!
The advantage to using CNCROi.com to do your leather engraving and cutting work are several fold. First and foremost, the repeatability our process provides you and your client meaning we can make a thousand patches identical or each one different (unique name or branding logo) and they will all look spectacular!
The other advantage is resolution, a branding iron, screen printing or even hand etching cannot achieve the same amount of depth (consistently). The font on the CNC Marking part is incredibly small yet, it’s clearly legible on these custom leather patches.
Additionally, we are capable of doing custom laser engraving and cutting on leather that’s meters long, these are small but we have an incredible capability with our imported machine. If you wanted a leather sign that was 12 feet long, we can do that for you no problem!
On lighter shades of leather, there is more smoke settling on the surface, this is easily cleaned in the regular laundry or using water (what we use in the shop). There isn’t any requirement to seal it though if you wish to paint fill this afterwards, it’s a good idea to prevent the paint from chipping or going away should the leather become wet.
If you look very closely, you can see horizontal lines in the leather, this is caused by the laser moving left to right as it’s engraving, the lines can be “faded out” using various processes but this will increase cost and production time and honestly, nobody really notices these details until you point it out.
Application wise, this is a great way to personalize just about anything you make out of leather, custom leather patches are only the beginning and as the results are permanent, nobody will steal your wallet or high-end leather clothing as they won’t be able to remove the marking.
This is by far my favorite custom leather patch, this can be easily modified for your application, so if you had clothing that you wanted to also add unique stencils to, we can make those and you can add additional details to your leather fashion.
Taking a look at them all together, the engraving is the same across the board, just as precise and clear as the last one. We can handle huge production runs of leather in our custom CNC shop.
These are straight off the machine, the clarity will be dramatically improved after cleaning.
Looking at them closely, it’s quite impressive how that little circle right under the “1 mm” is actually 1 mm in diameter! You can still see the fraction of a mm inside the circle!
Have some leather needing custom engraving or cutting? Contact CNCROi.com today!
