Custom Bamboo Cutting Board Engraving
Doing custom bamboo cutting board engraving can be customized however you like but for this blog post, we’ll focus on engraving the surface of a pre-made bamboo cutting board.
The nice thing about bamboo cutting boards is that they are incredibly cheap and last a relatively long time, you may be surprised but we use them all the time at home and I can literally make custom exotic cutting boards out of anything.
The main reason why I use mostly bamboo cutting boards at home is because although they advertise as not being dishwasher safe, they can be washed in the dishwasher for many many months before they start to break apart, unlike the custom offerings I have at CNCROi.com that are definitely NOT dishwasher safe.
The laser engraving aspect of this bamboo cutting board is something that CNCROi.com can do on any species, size, shape or thickness of cutting boards, this is just an example of what can be made.
CNCROi.com can also make custom cutting boards of any size, thickness, wood species or even mix in some multi-layered things such as pocket or holes going through the sides or top to bottom.
Although these are not cutting boards, it shows you what’s possible with laser engraving on wood.
A very popular wood species for cutting boards is Maple, it cuts great, lasts a long time (as long as you don’t put it in the dishwasher) and literally fits in any kitchen aesthetically speaking.
CNCROi.com can help with many areas of custom cutting board production, if you want to make your own and we just engrave the results, no problem, we can also add juice ditches all around and any other features you want or, of course, make it from scratch just for you to your spec.
The focus of laser engraving is to create some contrast and as this doesn’t have a juice ditch all around, the engraving becomes your juice content holder.
Although the laser engraving on this bamboo cutting board can be any depth, generally we make it about 1/16″ because any deeper starts to affect how easy it is to cut on this board and the costs go up very fast as well with every pass of the laser.
A great example of what CNCROi.com can produce is this laminated Maple cutting board.
When it comes to bamboo cutting board engraving, keep in mind that most are laminated, as a result, you will see striations of different wood densities mixed together from the lamination process.
The nice thing about wood is that it’s very easy to work with, and it has a huge margin for tolerances, unlike steel and plastics which CNCROi.com also works with at the shop.
So even if your isn’t the best or your fonts have issues, more often than not, you won’t notice it with laser engraving, even this image and font work great and their resolution was low, if this was a fiber etching job on stainless steel, you’d see all the defects but with wood, nope, all looks great!
Laminated boards are more dimensionally stable than solid hardwood cutting boards, which is why most are that way.
This job involved two bamboo cutting boards, both engraved with the same thing at CNCROi.com.
Although the process, machine through timing, is identical, you can see the results are different and this is due to the variation in wood density involved, more dense, darker result.
When it comes to laser engraving on wood, literally any vector image though font selection works great, there are of course issues when it comes to image qualities that are extremely poor but that is a rare situation that CNCROi.com is forced to work with.
As you can see from these images, laser engraving isn’t a continuous process, it’s a series of micro-explosions which create both the depth and the charcoal in one step.
Making custom juice ditches can be done to fit any outline of custom cutting board that you want us to make for you.
The smoke is minimal at this depth, we’ve done jobs at CNCROi.com where we are going up to a quarter of an inch in a hardwood and that produces a tremendous amount of smoke, but with going just 1/16″ deep, minimal material is vaporised on these bamboo cutting boards.
The results look great regardless, remember, same settings, different results, that’s what you end-up with wood, it’s an unpredictable material when it comes to performing this type of work.
Taking a look at these two bamboo cutting boards from another angle, you can see how great these both look and as long as they aren’t thrown in the dishwasher, like I do continually, will last for years.
Looking at the close-up below, you can see how the font wasn’t the best, but again, I doubt you would have noticed if I didn’t point it out to you and this isn’t signage, it’s a bamboo cutting board that will be used to chop stuff on, so it isn’t a big deal.
If you need a custom cutting board, any size, shape, material or thickness, be sure to contact CNCROi.com with your spec requirements, we’ll make it and ship it right to your door!