CNCROi.com: CNC Laser Department

With the move to our new, far larger location, CNCROi.com can finally start to segregate different departments and the most important to keep isolated is our Trotec Speedy 400 flexx.

Having 1200 square feet might sound “big” but once it starts to fill-up, it becomes relatively cozy as it means more equipment, more supplies and more room to move around.

Since starting CNCROi.com, we’ve doubled in square footage every year and a half, our CNC laser room is by far the smallest in our unit.

This is a bit of a “back in the day” review of how all the projects on only one of our many walls came into being, so lots of videos and thoughts on the projects at hand.

I’ve been moving straight and placing things for the past week and things are starting to finally get together, moving is always a hassle, moving an entire shop with equipment, inventory and accessories is quite another ball game.

By far the biggest “update” to our laser department is that pipe you see in the bottom right of the above photo, that’s the extraction system NOT IN THE SAME ROOM.

It’s wonderful to be able to work without having a massive extraction system right next to the laser, it’s so quiet now when working!

I left some room on the walls as I’m sure there will be lots of new samples produced in our new shop to fill interior walls throughout the unit.

Starting at the top left, you see the Canadian flag, we have mostly customers across North America.

This was a really fun acrylic demonstration to do, the laser time was crazy but the results look fantastic and I’ve gotten lots of great comments from people who have seen it.

It’s a wonderful example of the simple power of custom inlays and keep in mind CNCROi.com could have easily made this out of solid wood or just about any other material as well.

Right below that is our ever evolving pine sign.

This project could have been just as easily made etching into stainless steel but at a dramatically higher cost in materials and production time, it just shows you how diversified we are, using your scraps to make something into a showcase using even the simplest and most widely available materials, such as Pine.

Right below that is the custom “want unique text for your wall” sign.

I often get asked by people just how much resolution can we pack into a material, this is a prime example of what’s possible and this isn’t even the max we can do here at CNCROi.com detail wise!

Like everything else, this could have been made using a variety of materials, it’s all in the design to showcase what looks neat and unique!

Below that is the Rock on a rock.

Not only can CNCROi.com do custom work in acrylic, lamacoids, laminates, paper, wood and just about anything else, but we can also make stuff using stone and rocks!

We have a top of the line machine, with lenses, laser tubes and design skills to match, making CNCROi.com a very unique shop to help you with your custom needs!

Right below the Rock is a brick.

This is really going way back in time in our first shop, we’ve since engraved lots of rocks, bricks and other hard substances including custom cement “art” for other designers using a combination of our industrial laser, sand blaster and paint filling.

To the right is a custom live edge snow flake Christmas ornament.

I really enjoy working with live edge projects, it’s just something really soothing about working with and sanding down a real part of a tree you can see where it came from.

Just to mix things up a bit, to the right of the custom live edge wood ornament is a lamacoid of me back when I ran CNCKing.com, that’s where I cut my teeth to learn about design and CNC machines and have since closed it to focus entirely on CNCROi.com.

Lamacoids are really great for portraits, I wanted to make something that had a gradient in it and this red surface with white core made perfect sense as Trotec Lasers are red machines.

To the right of that is our Dear Leader, with his most famous of saying “Let’s print some invoices!” that was among the very first projects I did when I got our industrial wide-format dual-sourced CNC laser.

I have a video of that somewhere, just don’t know where.

Next up is our cowboy sign made out of plywood.

I wanted to show people how adding an extra layer of engraving to increase the contrast onto a piece of scrap plywood can make a massive difference, it was a fun project and shows you yet again, a design makes the project, not the other way around.

Right below that is our lamacoid red on white core with a plywood backing (for strength).

Strong contrasting lines (black and white images) come out great using lamacoids but lamacoids are generally very weak and can warp from heat using a laser for the engraving and cutting processes.

Simplest solution I came-up with to solve that problem and add a lot more strength and rigidity at the same time is just adding a backing onto it.

As with everything you see here, shop through design, I’m entirely self-taught so trial and error leads me down the path of success across all these materials!

Let’s take a look at the other side of the wall shall we?

I really wanted to show people what is possible using lamacoids, it can actually be used to make some incredibly beautiful work and this custom wall plaque with a gold surface and black core just came out amazing and is among my favorite projects I’ve showcased here at CNCROi.com.

It’s a perfect example of the best combination of materials, design and “sayings” I’ve come-up with over the past few years since founding CNCROi.com.

Right below the royal plaque, I engraved some flooring off-cuts to show you how the same design can look dramatically different just by changing-up the materials.

There is a lot more than just “wood selection” that goes into our custom projects, there is the level of sanding, finishing and “display qualities” to consider and although the floor boards look like something incredibly simple, there is a lot of info there to digest!

In between the floor boards is the project I did that showcases machine repeatability.

We have done projects where there is a production run in the THOUSANDS and I wanted to showcase to customers that not only can we handle that, but we can make them all the same (or different) as to your spec.

We are also able to take things one step further by using a combination of our lasers to produce some very unique “out of this world” results as well.

To the right of the machine repeatability demonstration is another custom inlay, this time an American flag out of acrylic.

I wanted to showcase to customers with this project that you aren’t stuck having elements “as they are”, you can have things pop-out, pop-in and really do some neat things using custom inlays across a whole host of materials.

Right below the American flag made out of acrylic is another example of high visibility signage, using our favorite friend, the mosquito.

Custom signage is a lot of fun, there are an endless variety of ways designing, constructing and finishing them and easy is unique in its own way.

A prime example of that is our Yoda sign that was made using LOTS of CNC router project sacrificial board and then laser engraving an image onto it.

We have an amazing ShopBot CNC router and I think a combination of both of those tools (and more on the way) really helps to highlight that in reality, CNCROi.com can make anything out of anything for any application, any size, any shape.

Need something custom? Contact us right now!