Custom Cigar Ash Tray Branding

I recently did a small job for a woodworker who required some custom cigar ash tray branding on both the metal stub and the surface of the live edge wood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFQ9IxXirtk/

CNCROi.com has done endless jobs in both metal and wood but it’s fun to do jobs that require a bit of both, and this is a perfect example of what’s possible, even at very low volumes with very unique hand crafted custom cigar ash trays.

As these are all custom cigar ash trays that are made by hand using live edge wood, there is nothing straight or parallel anywhere, so some creative methods to get things into a useful position need to be employed, in this case, it’s a brick that I branded with this same laser at CNCROi.com years ago… here’s the video of that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he5FebRd2W4/

This video brings me back, was before I started to stand in-front of the camera to explain what was going on, 7 years goes fast and CNCROi.com has grown exponentially in equipment and capabilities since February 2015 when this video was made!

The depth achieved with this laser engraving is about 1/8″ deep, it might seem a bit deep but with wood, I prefer to go deeper than necessary to give the customer room to sand without having fear of removing the engraving that was done for this custom cigar ash tray branding job at CNCROi.com.

CNCROi.com isn’t limited to traditional cigar ash tray design, we can make them in the shape of literally anything you can imagine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPG8rwvgG-c/

As this is a non-contact production method of engraving, there isn’t any need to hold anything down, gravity is more than capable of making sure nothing moves while our laser does it’s fancy work.

The goal here is two-fold for this custom cigar ash tray branding, the first is obviously engraving into the wood to create shadows and depth but secondly, to create a layer of charcoal at the bottom of said engraving, this is what provides the ultimate contrast required to make this visually appealing.

As no inks or dyes are involved, this is totally a food safe surface, you can eat off this and not worry about your health, pressure wash it without fear of removing the laser engraving or even chuck it from an airplane and no worry about the engraving breaking off.

Need a whole wack of custom cigar ash trays? We can go into volume production to your spec.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csjxnXOQKPA/

Although CNCROi.com has a lot of other equipment at our disposal at the shop, the laser is the best tool for this specific job, it produces contrast and depth in one step and the results are sharp, the customer will be doing the sanding on these finished custom cigar ash trays.

The smoke you see being produced by the laser isn’t a concern, it’s quickly extinguished should it become combustible and extracted from the machine using our vacuum system at the shop.

Of course, there are two cigar ash trays being worked on in this project, the first involves laser engraving the front surface, which was relatively flat, and the other will be branding the inside metal widget that’s used to put out the cigars.

If you are wondering how flexible our approach is to making custom trays, here’s a prime example using Cedar, this was used as an ash tray for many years by this customer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia_1nFx8kRI/

I always tell customers to give CNCROi.com unfinished work, the reason is straight forward, the mineral oil and beeswax applied to this surface will be removed during the sanding process and as such, needs to be re-applied by the customer.

I really like how this custom cigar ash tray branding came out, it will of course look way better after the customer puts some tender loving care to it by removing the smoke and soot but it does look like something that Dino will really enjoy in his lounge.

Next project on this custom cigar ash tray branding queue is another style of tray, in this case, the surface to be branded in the metal knob which I think is stainless steel.

We’ve worked with endless wood species to make custom trays for a wide variety of needs, big or small, we can handle it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHtIEyWOG4k/

With wood, CNCROi.com has a lot of leeway when it comes to branding the surface but with metal, the tolerances are incredibly narrow and branding something that needs to be dead-flat when it isn’t takes a lot longer to produce a good result with.

For this specific job, we are using CNCROi.com‘s galvo laser, mainly because of the depth involved, our gantry system’s head would hit the edges of this custom cigar ash tray while the galvo, we have tons of inches to spare.

As the surface isn’t dead flat, many passes at varying depths are required, again, the wood isn’t flat and to compound that, the metal widget isn’t parallel to the tray, so it just takes a bit longer to get things permanently branded correctly.

Maple, Cedar, Poplar, Ash, Oak, Basswood… whatever, we can machine it to your spec to make a custom cigar ash tray in any shape you require and well as just typical trays used for other purposes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-NKOjWP8A/

The challenge with these types of jobs, compared to our typical industrial projects at CNCROi.com, is that there is a lot more play required as not only is this a one-off, but it hasn’t been engineered to be within our spec requirements.

You can see the custom cigar ash tray branding is coming out great though, there are a few striations in the etching as this is a hand-crafted and finished metal widget but this is well within the requirements of the customer’s needs and the intended application involved.

I’m very happy with the finished results from this custom cigar ash tray branding on both the metal and the wood trays.

If you want your own custom shooter tray, CNCROi.com can manufacture that for you as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cBaZgqYO18/

Taking a look at the job at hand at different angles, it all looks great and the customer was very happy with the results that required two different laser systems and power sources to achieve.

Need some custom branding? Contact CNCROi.com right now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kThsFIpvjxc/