Custom Acrylic Jig
We do a lot of custom work at CNCROi.com with small pieces so we use jigs to make our life easier and the projects we produce more precise. I had an “old” MDF jig that I’ve been using for many months now and decided it was time to replace it, this time with an acrylic one!
First step along the process is putting a fresh sheet of acrylic on our Austrian CNC laser’s bed, this time, we used our acrylic cutting table so there were no flashbacks as you’d get on aluminium… this isn’t really necessary as it’s for an internal jig but always fun to do things the right way.
For efficiency, this jig was made in two parts, one with the big square holes (for the anodized aluminium promo cards) and the other with round holes to push them out (nice feature to have).
The holes are nice and precise thanks to the Austrian engineering that went into our large format dual sourced laser, in this case, we used our CO2 laser source but for a client, we could have color changed or engraved this jig as well.
Once everything is cut, it’s time to lift the acrylic jig off the acrylic cutting table!
Voila, that’s how you cut a jig! Putting both pieces together you can already see how they fit PERFECTLY together, not sure what I’ll do with the scraps from this project but the round acrylic disks found a new home right away and the square business card size one I’ll probably use to demo color changing acrylic or stencils. Will see… that’s good stuff not headed for the recycle bin anytime soon!
The cards fit PERFECT, in this case, I didn’t even glue the two layers together and not sure if I will or not, I’m thinking of building an interchangeable system so that different plates are quickly added and taken off using a top and bottom jigging system.
The jig looks way better than the previous one we made at CNCROi.com out of MDF… things are definitely going upscale here at the shop! Compare that to our old one.
Once everything was placed, it was time to do a test run using our promo anodized aluminium cards… as you can see from the picture below, it was a great success and the end of the day!
If you are looking for a company that can make custom jigs for you, you’ve found the right website, contact CNCROi.com today using the contact form or the pop-up in the bottom right corner of this page.
I’ll have to remember to take a video the next time we fiber mark anodized aluminium business cards! Here’s the video… as always!